Intent
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) was created to ensure every child can read well, quickly. The principles of ELS are based upon:
• the delivery of whole-class, high-quality first teaching with well-structured daily lesson plans
• the use of consistent terminology by teachers, children and parents
• the use of consistent resources that support effective teaching
• repetition and reinforcement of learning
• regular and manageable assessment to ensure that all children ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’
Implementation
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen Phonics programme. The aim of ELS is ‘Getting all children to read well, quickly’. It 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.
Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently.
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.
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 each child’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.
We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs ‘sh’ (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).
We teach children to:
- Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
- Encode (write) 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.
Long Term Plan and progression
Year 2 ELS Spellings Long Term Plan
ELS decodable reading books
The use of decodable reading books from Oxford University Press are integrated into the programme. Closely-matched decodable books enable children to practise decoding
skills based on their secure phonics knowledge, in context, whilst building comprehension and fluency, ensuring confidence and success for all children.
A wide range of books from Oxford Reading Tree are used to support the development of early reading skills. These include: Word Sparks (fully decodable books that tackle the word gap), Story Sparks (phonically decodable stories to develop and deepen comprehension skills), Traditional Tales (timeless stories with clear phonic progression), inFact (aligned to Letters & Sounds Phases with a limited number of non-decodable topic words to develop vocabulary and comprehension).
Repeated reading of these texts supports our children's increased fluency in decoding. Follow up discussions of each text then help children both to understand what they are reading and build up their knowledge of how texts work. These texts are used from lilac to gold book band. This scheme is fully supported by the ORT eBooks, which our families access at home.
ELS and SEND
The ELS programme is simple to teach, with clear and simple daily classroom routines which reduces cognitive load and maximises the chances of success. Importantly, children can focus on what they need to learn without getting distracted. The classroom resources and artwork have all been created with purpose, the text space is clean, the artwork is repeated for familiarity and a consistent lesson structure support processing. The pace of ELS lessons can be adapted, it may be slowed or periods of extended review can be omitted to increase the speed of teaching where you have slowed the progression. 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. Targeted, short interventions can be used where needed. Following assessment, these sessions focus on specific areas of need, e.g. oral blending or GPC recognition and provide children with short bursts of additional support to ensure
they keep up.
ELS and assessment
Assessment of the children’s grapheme knowledge, blending and word reading is key to ensuring that all children make rapid progress though the programme, and that children keep up, rather than ‘catch up’. Using the assessment cycle alongside daily in-class assessments ensures that we know where every child is within their early reading journey. The key assessment points within ELS are as follows:
Assessment Tracker - an online assessment and tracking system, supporting teachers in the classroom to make informed decisions around intervention and managing pupils’ progress.
Reception / P1 baseline assessment.
Half-termly assessments (in week five of each half term).
Diagnostic assessment.
Year 1 / P2 Phonics Screening Check practice (half-termly from Year 1 / P2 Autumn 1)
Supporting Reading at Home
- Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.
- We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound)
- We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:
Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.
Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.
Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!
We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds.
Phase 2 Pronunciation Video for Parents
Phase 3 Pronunciation Video for Parents
Phase 5 Pronunciation Video for Parents
At the beginning of each academic year, we will hold an information session for parents and carers to find out more about what we do for Phonics, Reading and English at our schools. Please do join us:
Parents meeting information slideshow
Further information for parents, including videos of how to support your child at home :
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/essential-letters-and-sounds/
Nursery
In Nursery, Phase One phonics is embedded throughout the school day. This is done through high quality provision, modelled speaking and listening, enjoying and sharing books, rhymes, song and poems and the language rich environment we provide.
In addition, there are daily adult let activities which focus on the seven aspects and three stands of Phase One teaching:
- Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds
- Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds
- Aspect 3: General sound discrimination – body percussion
- Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme
- Aspect 5: Alliteration
- Aspect 6: Voice sounds
- Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting
Each aspect is divided into three strands:
- Strand 1: Tuning into sounds (auditory discrimination)
- Strand 2: Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing)
- Strand 3: Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension)
Activities within the seven aspects are designed to help children:
- listen attentively;
- enlarge their vocabulary;
- speak confidently to adults and other children;
- discriminate phonemes;
- reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear, in order, all through the word;
- use sound-talk to segment words into phonemes
As and when the children are ready to do so, they begin to learn Phase Two grapheme phoneme correspondences, alongside their Phase One learning.
Phase 1 environmental sounds guide for parents
Phase 1 instrumental sounds guide for parents
Phase 1 body percussion guide for parents
Phase 1 rhythm and rhyme guide for parents
Phase 1 alliteration guide for parents
Phase 1 voice sounds guide for parents
Phase 1 oral blending and segmenting guide for parents
Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
The Phonics Screening Check is a statutory reading check that all year 1 children take during a particular week in June. The check is designed to assess if each child has reached the age appropriate standard of decoding by the end of year 1.
The check is administered on a 1:1 basis with their class teacher. The children read 40 words, 20 of which are real words and 20 are pseudo or nonsense words. The children can read the words as whole words or by breaking them down into their component sounds, using their knowledge of the alphabetic code, followed by blending the sounds together. The children will have had lots of exposure to similar activities and resources through their phonics lessons. We ensure it does not feel like a ‘test’ and the children simply think they are doing some reading with their teacher.
Since the check was first introduced in 2012, the expected standard has been a minimum of 32/40 words read correctly. As a parent, you will be informed of your child’s score shortly after the completion of the check. If a child does not reach the expected standard in year 1, they will receive additional support and intervention in year 2 and will re-sit the check in the June of that year.
Year 1 Phonics Screening Parents and Carers Guide
Year 1 Phonics Screening Parents and Carers Presentation
Year 1 Phonics Screening Example
As always, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher if you have any concerns about the Year 1 phonics check or phonics in general. We are always happy to help.
