Marlborough
Early Reading
Blending and decoding their way into a world of reading
Essential Letter and Sounds
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen Phonics program. The aim of ELS is to ‘Get all children to read well, quickly’.
ELS teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words. ELS is a whole class teaching model. This means that every single pupil has the same opportunities when learning to read. Learning to read well, early, is a priority for every child. Children who may find it harder to learn how to read are given extra support from their teacher every day. We ensure that all children learn to read well and keep up rather than have to catch-up.
Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Nursery through Phase 1 activities. Phase 2 teaching begins in the spring term and prepares children for the Reception year. In Reception, Phonics is taught explicitly everyday. Throughout the day, children will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and as a class.
Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the school to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.
We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover.
We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs (four letters spelling one sound).
We teach children to:
- Decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
- Encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.
The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.
ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.
Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support children’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.
ELS is supported by a wide range of completely decodable texts. These cover both fiction and non-fiction and are exciting and engaging for all our pupils. We match the home reading texts to each child’s current phonic knowledge to ensure that they consolidate their most recent teaching and learning at home.
Reading in Nursery
At Marlborough, our love of reading begins in Nursery. Reading is an important part of our daily routine and supports the children’s early language acquisition, comprehension skills and cognitive development.
Weekly core texts are selected by teachers and these link with themes and topics being studied across the academic year. The children are given adequate time to read texts in groups, make links with other texts as well as their own personal experiences.
Reading at Home
Every week, each child takes home a wordless Phase One Phonics book. The Phase One phonics books are wordless and help to develop the children’s communication and language skills. Each child also takes home a selection of bedtime stories to share with an adult at home.
Reading in Reception and Year 1
To further foster the children’s love of reading in Reception and Year One, we ensure each classroom has a calm and inviting space for independent reading.
The books in each class have been carefully selected to match the children’s interests and topics they are learning about.
In Reception and Y1, the children have the time to study core books. They are able to draw upon other texts containing similar themes, characters or genres.
Here, the children are able to expand and develop their literary knowledge in fiction and non-fiction texts.
The continuous provision and carefully planned play opportunities in Reception and Year 1 allows for the children to further embed their language acquisition. The children are actively encouraged to lead their play and share their learning experiences with their peers.
Phonics at Marlborough
We are dedicated to ensuring every child has a lifelong love for reading. We believe that reading is a life skill. A child who is a confident and skilled reader will continue to thrive in all areas of learning. The systematic teaching of phonics at Marlborough provides a secure foundation for every child’s future reading success. We are committed to ensuring that pupils are equipped with the necessary phonic skills and knowledge needed to become a secure reader.
Phonics in Nursery
Phonics teaching begins in Nursery. In the autumn term, we primarily focus on Phase 1. Phase 1 consists of:
|
Element |
Content and Coverage |
|
1 |
Environmental sounds: • To develop children’s listening skills and awareness of sounds within the environment. • Further development of vocabulary and children’s identification and recollection of differences between sounds. • To make up simple sentences and talk in greater detail about sounds. |
|
2 |
Instrumental sounds: • To experience and develop awareness of sounds made with instruments and noise makers. • To listen to and appreciate the difference between sounds made with instruments. • To use a wide vocabulary to talk about the sounds instruments make. |
|
3 |
Body percussion sounds: • To develop awareness of sounds and rhythms. • To distinguish between sounds and to remember patterns of sound. • To talk about sounds we make with our bodies and what the sounds mean. |
|
4 |
Rhythm and rhyme: • To experience and appreciate rhythm and rhyme and to develop awareness of rhythm and rhyme in speech. • To increase awareness of words that rhyme and to develop knowledge about rhyme. • To talk about words that rhyme and to produce rhyming words. |
|
5 |
Alliteration: • To develop understanding of alliteration. • To listen to sounds at the beginning of words and hear the differences between them. • To explore how different sounds are articulated and extend understanding of alliteration. |
|
6 |
Voice sounds: • To distinguish between the differences in vocal sounds, including oral blending and segmenting. • To explore speech sounds. • To talk about the different sounds that we can make with our voices. |
|
7 |
Oral blending: • To develop oral blending and segmenting of sounds and words. • To listen to phonemes within words and to remember them in the order in which they occur. • To talk about the different phonemes that make up words. |
The daily adult-led phonics sessions consist of practical, multi-sensory activities that we build upon as the children progress through nursery. In addition to the daily adult-led sessions, the children have opportunities to implement their phonic knowledge by leading their own child-led mark making, role play, singing and art based activities.
In the spring term, the children in Nursery begin to learn about Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs). These daily sessions will develop children’s auditory awareness of the phonemes for the single letter sounds, readying them to use and apply these as they formally begin their phonics teaching in Reception.
|
Spring 1 |
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|
WK 1 |
Wk 2 |
Wk 3 |
Wk 4 |
Wk 5 |
Wk 6 |
|
s |
a |
t |
p |
i |
n |
|
Spring 2 |
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|
Wk 1 |
Wk 2 |
Wk 3 |
Wk 4 |
Wk 5 |
Wk 6 |
|
m |
d |
g |
o |
c |
k |
|
Summer 1 |
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|
Wk 1 |
Wk 2 |
Wk 3 |
Wk 4 |
Wk 5 |
Wk 6 |
Wk 7 |
|
e |
u |
r |
h |
b |
f |
l |
|
Summer 1 |
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|
Wk 1 |
Wk 2 |
Wk 3 |
Wk 4 |
Wk 5 |
Wk 6 |
Wk 7 |
|
j |
v |
w |
x |
y |
z |
qu |
Phonics in Reception
Phase Two
Phase Two begins with a sequence 20 grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs), including digraphs (two letter grapheme representing one sound). This builds up to teaching the children the skill of decoding which consists of learning to blend to read. Alongside this, children are taught 12 ‘harder to read and spell words’ (HRWs). These are words that cannot be decoded by applying phonic knowledge and therefore have to be learnt by sight.
| Reception/Primary 1 Autumn 1: Phase 2 |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|
/s/ /t/ /p/
|
/i/ /n/ /m/ /d/ |
/g/ /o/ /c/
|
/k/ /e/ /u/ /r/ |
/s/ Assess and review week R:1 |
/h/ /b/ /f/ /l/ |
| I, the, no | put, of, is | to, go, into | pull | as, his |
Phase 3 and 4
In Phase 3, the children are introduced to trigraphs (three letter grapheme representing one sound) and suffixes. The children have further opportunities to decode words, captions and sentences containing Phase 2 and Phase 3 sounds. Adjacent consonant words are also introduced within the Phase 3 teaching. A further 32 HRWs are also introduced.
| Reception/Primary 1 Autumn 2: Phase 3 |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | |
|
/j/ /v/ /w/ /ks/
|
/y/ /z/ /kw/ /ch/
|
/sh/ /th/ |
(voiced and unvoiced) /ng/ /nk/
|
/ai/ /ee/ /igh/ /oa/
|
- es (where there us no root change to the root word) Assess and Review R:2 |
Review week R: 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| he, she, buses | we, me, be | push | was, her | my, you |
| Reception/Primary 1 Spring 1: Phase 3-4 |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|
Review week R:4
/oo/ (book) |
/ar/ /ur/ /oo/ (food) /or/ |
/ow/ /oi/ /ear/ /air/ |
/ure/ /er/ /oa/
|
Assess and review week R:5 |
Review week R:6
|
| they, all, are | ball, tall | when, what |
Several review weeks are included at the end of the spring term to ensure that the children have adequate opportunity to recall and further apply their reading knowledge within a range of challenging daily tasks during their phonics lessons.
| Reception/Primary 1 Spring 2: Phase 3-4 |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
| Review week R:7 | Review week R:8
|
Review week R:9 |
Review week R:10 |
Assess and Review week R:11 | Review week R:12 |
| said, so, have | were, out, like | some, come, there | little, one, do | children, love |
Phase 4
Phase 4 covers a larger area of consolidation of all previously taught sounds as well as the introduction to different word structures (e.g. CVCC words. Consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant). The children will further explore the use of suffixes in words. There is a further focus on oral blending within the teaching of Phase 4.
| Reception/Primary 1 Summer 1: Phase 4 |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|
phase 4:1 CVCC -ed/ed/ |
phase 4:2 CCVC -ed/t/
|
phase 4:3 CCVCC -ed/d/ |
Phase 4:4 CCCVC |
Assess and Review week R:13 |
phase 4:5 CCCVCC -er -est |
Phase 5
Towards the end of the Reception year, the children are introduced to Phase 5. The Phase 5 GPCs are taught with a particular focus on reading words containing these sounds. There are 20 new GPCs that are taught during this phase and a further 16 new HRWs.
| Reception/Primary 1 Summer 2: Phase 5 introduction |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|
/ai/ /ow/ /igh/ /ee/ -le |
/oi/ /ur/ /(y)oo/ /or/
|
/w/ /f/ /(y)oo /oa/ |
/or/ /ee/ /ai/ /ee/ |
Assess and Review week R:14 |
/igh/ /oa/ /(y)oo/ /s/ |
| oh, their | people, Mr, Mrs | your, ask, should | would, could, asked | house, mouse, water |
Phonics in Year 1
In Year 1, the children will revise all previously taught Phase 5 grapheme phoneme correspondences. In the autumn term, the children are introduced to 2 new GPCs and 16 new HRWs.
In the spring term, children in Year 1 will learn all alternative spellings for previously taught sounds. They will also learn 49 new GPCs as well as 4 new HRS words. There is also a focus on oral blending to support reading. Year 1 children will also continue to revise Phase 2, Phase 3 and Phase 4.
| Year 1/Primary 2 Autumn 1: Phase 5 |
Year 1/Primary 2 Spring 1: Phase 6
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|
Revise:
week Y1:8 |
(acorn) /ai/ (they) /ai/ (great) /ai/ (weight) (father) /ee/(he) /igh/ (find) /igh/ (by)
|
/oa/ (go) /o/ (was) /oo/ (push) /y/+/oo/ (music) /c/ (school) /sh/ (chef) /e/ (head) |
/ur/ (world) /ur/ (learn) /oo/ (soup) /oa/+/l/ (shoulder) /ee/(brief) /v/(have) /i/ (gym)
|
Assess and review week Y1:9
|
/air/ (care) /air/ (there) /air/ (pear) /ch/ (catch)
|
| here, sugar. friend | because |
Year 1/Primary 2 Spring 2: Phase 5
| Year 1/Primary 2 Summer 1, Summer 2:all phases |
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
|
Review all previously taught GPCs for reading and spelling and teach further rarely-used GPCs (see Appendix ii) |
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Decodable Reading Books
From Nursery to Year Two, each child will receive fully decodable books to read at home. These books match the ELS programme and match sounds being taught in each phonic phase. The decodable books begin in nursery with wordless texts and build up from phase two to five.
These books provide the children with an opportunity to:
- apply and practise their decoding skills
- reading words and sentences containing sounds that they are learning in school.
These decodable texts help to:
- build fluency
- boost confidence and
- encourage reading for pleasure.
Banded Reading Books
When children have finished the phonics books, they move onto our banded reading book scheme.
We use a selection of schemes including:
- Oxford Reading Tree
- Big Cat Phonics
- Rigby Star and
- Project X.
These books are levelled into colour bands so that children can progress through the books in levels of difficulty. They begin on a lilac/pink book before progressing through the different colour bands. Once they have completed the scheme, they are a free reader. Children are heard by an adult at least once per week and have their books changed every week. They are assessed regularly and moved through the book bands. By the end of Year 2, we would expect all children to be a free reader.
Parent Workshops
Early Reading in Reception
Early Reading in Year 1
Phonics teaching does not stop at the end of Year 1, but continues as children move through the school, with links being made between their GPC knowledge and spelling. Children will still continue to revision of all previously taught GPCs for reading and spelling. As the children progress into Year 1 there is a focus on wider reading, spelling, grammar and writing.
