Gateway Academy Phonics
From the beginning of Reception, our children develop their early reading skills through the consistent and robust teaching of the daily systematic, synthetic phonics programme, Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Children have books that match and support their phonics development and ability and are encouraged to read them at home with an adult. Daily ‘keep up’ sessions ensure all children make progress and ‘Let’s Read’ sessions - focusing on prosody, comprehension, and decoding - are timetabled three times per week.
Children enjoy listening to challenging texts through daily, dedicated story time in EYFS and KS1.
For more information about Little Wandle Letters and Sound Revised, please visit their website where you will find videos to support the pronunciation of sounds and videos outlining how phonics is taught to your child.
Please click on the links for more information on how to support your child at home. Any of the EYFS or KS1 teachers are happy to provide extra resources or talk with you in more detail on how to do this.
Little Wandle Progression overview Reception
Phase 2 Grapheme Information 1
Phase 2 Grapheme Information 2
Grapheme Mats Phase 2 Capital Letters
Little Wandle Reception Word List
Little Wandle sheet How to say Phase 3 Sounds
Little Wandle Month word cards
Little Wandle Letter Formation Reception Practise Sheets 1
Little Wandle Letter Formation Reception Practise Sheets 2
Little Wandle Letter Formation Reception Practise Sheets 3
Little Wandle Progression Overview Year 1
Grow the Code Phase 2,3 and 5 Mats
Little Wandle Year 1 Word List all
Little Wandle Year 1 Word List by week
Little Wandle Sheet How to say Phase 5 sounds
Tricky Word Support
Here are some examples of how to help your child understand why tricky words are tricky - and how the sounds are different in these words.
Little Wandle labels Phase 2-4
There is a special section on tricky words for parents on the Little Wandle website. Visit their website here to see it.
Phonics screening check
Schools are required to assess children’s phonic skills at the end of Year 1.
- The phonics screening check is a statutory assessment that was introduced in 2012 for all children in Year 1.
- It will take place in early June.
- It comprises of a list of 40 words (20 real and 20 nonsense).
- Expectation from the Government is that pupils should achieve at least 32 out of 40 to reach the expected level. The pass mark varies year on year.
- The check will take up to fifteen minutes per pupil and will be conducted by the class teacher.
- Children who do not achieve the expected level at the end of Year 1 will retake the screening in Year 2.
Click here for the slides that the Year 1 team will be presenting at our meeting on Tuesday 21 April.
Little Wandle Sheet - What's in the Phonics Check?
Year 1 Additional words card for Phonics Check practise
Parent Workshops
To support parents and carers, we host Parent Workshops where we introduce Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised and we share how we support the Early Reading of our children. We also invite parents in to class to see how we support the children with their phonics learning in school.
Little Wandle Reception Autumn Parent and Carers Phase 2
Little Wandle Reception Grapheme Information 1
Little Wandle Reception Grapheme Information 2
Little Wandle Handout - Your Child's Reading Journey Year 1
Little Wandle Year 1 Phonics and Early Reading Phase 5
Ms Saleem in Rec Red is the Phonics postholder; Ms Ricketts is the Phase lead for Year 1 and 2 and Mrs Cleary oversees Literacy across the Academy. All these staff members are based in a year group that teaches daily phonics.