Phonics

· To establish consistent practice, progression and continuity in the teaching and learning of phonics and spelling throughout the school.

· To differentiate phonics and spelling work according to the needs of pupils, so that all pupils are given sufficient challenge at a level at which they can experience success.

· To give children word work strategies that will enable them to become fluent readers and confident writers.

· Careful differentiation for all ability groups, addressing the needs of children with special educational needs and gifted children, based on ongoing formative assessment and teacher judgement. Usually children are in groups between 1-20 children.

· Well planned interactive lessons, delivered at a steady pace, that keep children engaged and focused.

· Opportunities to reinforce and apply acquired phonic knowledge and skills across the curriculum.

We believe that an effective curriculum for Reading, Writing, Maths and Science is a door for all pupils to enter into a more fulfilling and hopeful life where they can flourish and aspire to reach their full potential having a positive impact on the flourishing of those around them. Phonics develops children’s reading and writing which allows children to lead more fulfilling and hopeful life.

As a school we have chosen the Letters and Sound scheme of work and other schemes based on Letters and Sounds. The scheme of work supports our teachers in delivering fun and engaging lessons which helps to raise standards and allow all pupils to reach their full potential and become fluent confident readers. We are confident that the scheme of work more than adequately meets the national vision for Phonics.

At the end of Year 2 children will be fluent readers. This way, children can focus on developing their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonic Screening Test at the end of Year 1. However, we firmly believe that reading is the key to all learning and so the impact of reading goes beyond the results of the statutory assessments.

Phonics Shed provides a systematic way to teach reading through synthetic phonics. Children are taught to decode by breaking down words into sounds as a way to “synthesize” the whole word from letters and sounds. There are fully-resourced and editable planning sequences, children are taught, through techniques such as ‘Say It, Stretch It, Sound It,’ to decode by breaking down words into sounds as a way to segment and blend (“synthesise“) the whole word with the learning reinforced by offline and online multi-sensory tasks and games

Through a series of storybooks set in the Phonics Shed garden with Joe as a guide, children are introduced to the first 40 most commonly-used high-frequency words and all 44 phonemes of the English language. Each storybook introduces a new character and its associated grapheme phoneme correspondence (GPC) allowing children to develop in their phonics attainment as they get to know the Phonics Shed characters and progress through the series.

The read-aloud teaching book series comprises 120 stories which are supplied in physical form and also available digitally

In addition to narrative storybook series, we use a set of decodable reading books which spans the programme’s range. In these stories, many familiar characters appear but the words are strictly limited to those that are either decodable by the current stage of learning or are explicitly teachable as partially decodable words.

Phonics Shed provides a multi-sensory systematic progression through synthetic phonics beginning with sound-making and early reading at pre-school, through the requirements of the Year 1 phonics screening check and onto the Spelling Shed scheme that we use throughout school to Year 6.

The Nursery phonics curriculum introduces songs, games and books linked to Phonics Shed. Chapter 1 of Phonics shed is taught throughout Nursery. There are nine elements within Chapter 1:

Reception

The Reception phonics curriculum teaches children the first letter sounds in manageable groups, based on the Phonics Shed. Children are then taught to read and then write simple words using these sounds. By the end of Reception, we aim for all children to be working securely in Chapter 3.

The context of our school means that it is very important children are still drip fed Chapter 1 phonics, which has a focus on hearing and identifying sounds.

Children who can listen for and identify initial, middle and final sounds will be able to successfully blend the sounds to read words. Children will be able segment and blend sounds in order to read words within sentences.

Year 1

The children in Year 1 continue with daily phonics practise, following Phonics Shed. They spend two weeks consolidating Chapter 2 and 3. Then begin Chapter 4a and 4b.

All children complete the national phonics screening in Year 1 during a specified week in June. Any children who did not take the test or did not pass the test in Year 1 will retake it again in Year 2.

Year 2

The children in Year 2 continue to follow the Phonics Shed programme and the main focus is on supporting children’s fluency and accuracy in spelling. Children work through Chapter 4C completing phonics within the Spring term.

In Year 2 children will also complete the Phonics Screening check (November)

Words your child might use when talking about phonics:

Phoneme	Phonemes are the smallest unit of speech - sounds which make up a word. If you change a phoneme in a word, you would change its meaning. For example, there are three phonemes in the word sit /s/-/i/-/t/. If you change the phoneme /s/ for /f/, you have a new word, fit. If you change the phoneme /t/ in fit for a /sh/, you have a new word, fish - /f/-/i/-/sh/.
Grapheme	Graphemes are the written representation of sounds – the letters.
Digraph	A grapheme containing 2 letters that makes just one sound, eg /sh/ in shop or /ch/ in chip.
Trigraph	A grapheme containing 3 letters that makes just one sound, eg /air/ in pair or /igh/ in night.
Split digraph	A grapheme containing 2 letters but are separated by another sound, eg ‘ae’ in make is separated by the sound /k/ so it is split /a-e/.
Blend	The process of putting individual sounds together to read a word, eg sh–o-p, shop.
Segment	The process of breaking a word into individual sounds to spell a word.
Sound buttons	Teachers might use these under words to indicate whether the sound is a single letter sound (dot) or a digraph/trigraph (dash) to help children to blend the sounds correctly in the word, eg shop.

Children who require further support with phonics understanding Year 3 upwards will receive intervention support and 'phonics blasts' will take place throughout learning. Children will be 'targeted' to be heard read each day.

These websites are excellent for exploring Phonics:

Phonics

Curriculum