We love reading at Wallace Fields Infant School and Nursery and it is the main driver for our whole curriculum. We aim to ensure that each and every child can read at an appropriate level for their age by the time they leave our school, regardless of any barriers. 

Teaching of Phonics at WFIS:

At WFIS we follow the Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised phonics programme to teach phonics. This scheme has been validated by the Department for Education and follows current best practice on the teaching of phonics and reading and educational research about the way that children learn best.

Children in Reception and Year 1 have 5 phonics lessons a week where they learn 4 new phonemes (sounds) and they take part in a review lesson at the end of the week to embed the new learning. There are a number of useful resources to support parents and carers at home with phonics. These can be found here.

We have also produced a glossary to assist parents with a guide to the terminology used when we are teaching phonics. This can be found here

Glossary of Terms for Teaching Phonics

Parents and carers can often worry about the pronunciation of phonemes; these useful videos will help you ensure you’re producing the correct sound:

Phase 2 – sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1

Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1 (youtube.com)

Phase 2 – sounds taught in Reception Autumn 2

Bing Videos – Phase 2 Taught in YR Autumn 2

Phase 3 – sounds taught in Reception Spring 1

Bing Videos – Phase 3 taught in YR Spring 1

For a breakdown of our phonics progression across the whole school to see what is covered and when please see below.

Programme Overview Little Stars

Programme Overview Big Stars

Programme Overview Reception

Programme Overview Year 1

Please click below to read our Phonics & Early Reading Policy

Phonics & Early Reading Policy

Teaching of Reading at WFIS

We welcome you to watch the below video for further information about how we teach Early Reading at WFIS.

Please watch the below video for further information on the implementation of the Little Wandle phonics scheme

Supporting your child with reading at home

Although your child will be taught to read at school, you can have a huge impact on their reading journey by continuing their practice at home. There are two types of reading book that your child may bring home:

• A reading practice book. This will be at the correct phonic stage for your child. They should be able to read this fluently and independently. This book has been carefully matched to your child’s current reading level. If your child is reading it with little help, please don’t worry that it’s too easy – your child needs to develop fluency and confidence in reading. Listen to them read the book. Remember to give them lots of praise – celebrate their success! If they can’t read a word, read it to them. After they have finished, talk about the book together.

• A sharing book. Your child will not be able to read this on their own. In order to encourage your child to become a lifelong reader, it is important that they learn to read for pleasure. The sharing book is a book they have chosen for you to enjoy together. Please remember that you shouldn’t expect your child to read this alone. Read it to or with them. Discuss the pictures, enjoy the story, predict what might happen next, use different voices for the characters, explore the facts in a non-fiction book. The main thing is that you have fun!

7 Top Tips To Support Reading At Home

Recommended Reading Lists:

We are passionate about promoting reading for pleasure and encouraging children to access a range of texts. We encourage you to use these age-appropriate reading lists to discover new text-types and authors at home. You will find many of these texts in your local library or bookstore. We do encourage you to purchase any from independent bookstores to support small businesses.

https://www.booksfortopics.com/preschool

https://www.booksfortopics.com/reception

https://www.booksfortopics.com/year-1

https://www.booksfortopics.com/year-2

Audio Books

Audiobooks are a fantastic resource for children to listen to high-quality stories and be exposed to new vocabulary. Audiobooks can be listened to anywhere for example on long journeys or when getting ready to sleep and can act as a great way to develop a child’s love of reading if they’re finding decoding a challenge. Sooper Books has kindly donated all of their award-winning stories and audiobooks to our school for you to access at home.

Please use the following links to access the stories and audiobooks free of charge:

Bedtime stories — a selection of the world’s best 5-10 minute bedtime stories and audiobooks

Fairy tales — a selection of classic fairy tales retold in a modern and fun way

Sooper Series — a selection of original stories in episode format. Each episode is a separate 10-15 minute story

Rhymes & Poems — a selection of 3-5 minute funny rhymes

Aesop’s fables — a selection of 3-5 minute moral tales, retold in a fun and modern way

Reading in Nursery

The children's love of reading begins in our Nursery, where children take home books to enjoy with their parents. Our incredible PTA have created a set of Story Sacks to our Nursery children are encouraged to take home a bag full of props to help them develop their enjoyment of listen to stories and of retelling them. We love seeing all the photos that parents/carers upload to Tapestry showing us how their children are accessing the story sacks at home. Story sacks are a fantastic way of bringing a story to life and enjoying story time together.

Library

At Wallace Fields Infant School and Nursery, we are lucky enough to have an exciting, inspiring and well stocked Library Bus. The Library Bus is full of a variety of texts which support our children in learning about the world around them. All of our texts are organised into sections which make finding and selecting a book easy for our children. Each week the children visit the Library Bus to have time to browse and select a book that interests them to borrow and enjoy at home. The aim of the borrowing library is to encourage children to share texts with their families at home and they return the books once they have finished enjoying them.

Here is our wonderful Library:

 

 

 

Our Library is stocked with chapter books, children’s classics, traditional tales, non-fiction texts and poetry. We aim to open our children’s eyes to the issues in the world around them and a brilliant way to do this is through books. It is also our responsibility to support children in developing their understanding of their emotions and we have a range of texts to enable children to learn more about themselves and how to accept others who may be different.

Here is a selection of these texts:

Diversity

Wallace Fields Infant School and Nursery is a diverse and inclusive school. We pride ourselves on the high-quality education we offer all children and one of the best ways of engaging children is through books. We ensure that the texts that we study in English and that are available for the children in our Library represent the diverse make-up of our community. We know that it is important for children to understand that we are all unique in our looks, personalities, family-situations and backgrounds but that these differences are to be celebrated. The books in our Library support us in promoting the British Values through English lessons and story times.

Here is a selection of texts which represent our school and wider community:

Reading and Maths

Within Maths lessons children are encouraged to use their decoding and comprehension skills to read and answer questions. This is something that we explicitly teach the children as it is a skill that is necessary to enable them to become successful in their learning. Through our whole-class teaching we model (show) the children how to read questions and through the explicit teaching of vocabulary we demonstrate how to pick out key vocabulary in the questions and comprehend what the question is asking us to do. We model this process throughout every lesson to support children in developing their independence and transferring their reading skills to their maths learning.

Children also have access to texts within our Library which support them in developing their knowledge of numbers and other areas of learning.

Birthday Books

As our aim is to promote a love of reading, each classroom contains a library of books for the children to enjoy. You are very welcome to contribute a book to the class library in celebration of your child’s birthday. Children love to find and re-read their birthday books in the months and years after! If you do wish to contribute a book on your child’s behalf, please see our wishlist for books that we would be grateful to receive.

Please click here for Amazon Wish List

Reading Aloud Competition

In the Summer term we hold our annual Reading Competition in which children are encouraged to read aloud an extract of a favourite book. We hold preliminary rounds in class and the children are judged on their expression, confidence and articulation. A child from each class will then be selected to read in the final round. These performances are then recorded and the Headteacher has the privilege of watching each clip and deciding the winners.