Phonics

What is Phonics

Here at Holly Grove we follow 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' phonics scheme.

Phonics is taught in a highly structured programme of daily lessons across Nursery/ Reception and KS1. Little Wandle programme is followed, providing a synthetic approach to the teaching of phonics. This is supplemented by supporting children to read using Big cat Collins reading books, ebooks at home. Along with ICT games such as topmarks and phonicsplay.

Each session gives an opportunity for children to revisit their previous experience, be taught new skills, practise together and apply what they have learned.

Aims

The aim of the phonics curriculum is to teach children to read quickly and skillfully and provide them with reading and writing skills to access other curriculum areas. The systematic teaching of phonics has a high priority throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage One and we are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers along with aiding children be able to read for pleasure. We acknowledge that children need to be taught the key skills in segmenting and blending to be equipped with the knowledge to be able to complete the phonics check at the end of Year One. We also value and encourage the pupils to read for enjoyment and recognise that this starts with the foundations of acquiring letter sounds, segmenting and blending skills.

How Phonics links with our Torch Values

torch values in phonics .pdf

What Children say about Phonics at Holly Grove

phonics pupil voice.pdf

Implementation

Reading and phonics are prioritised at Holly Grove to allow pupils to access the full curriculum. In order to build secure blending and segmenting skills, children must be fully immersed in a strong foundation of early phonics in their early years (Nursery and Reception) and experience an effectively taught synthetics phonics curriculum in Reception and Key Stage One. Here at Holly Grove we follow the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’ scheme, where phonics is taught daily and we follow a rigorous and sequential approach that develops pupils’ fluency, confidence and enjoyment in reading and writing. During these sessions’ children practice their grapheme to phoneme correspondence, oral blending and segmenting. Phonics lessons are fast-paced and repetitive in order to introduce, recall and embed learning. At all stages, phonics attainment is assessed, and gaps are addressed quickly and effectively for all pupils with same day catch up. Interventions are planned for those children who are working below expected levels, following the rapid catch up programme.

Decoding Strategies:

1. Phonics- blending and segmenting

2.- Word recognition- breaking up the word, looking for words within words

3.- context- using pictures/ diagrams: using understanding about the topic

4.- Grammatical- using punctuation; known prefixes and suffixes

Pupils access reading books which complement the phonics they are learning and are encouraged to use a range of decoding strategies from an Early age. These reading books follow Big Cat Collins. Reading books are sent home each week via children's Collins hub accounts. Children have 3 reading sessions per week which focus on Decoding, prosody and comprehension sessions.

Phases of the Phonics Programme

Children in Nursery begin with Foundations to phonics which concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. The emphasis during the foundation stage is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

As children move into Reception they continue to build upon the listening activities and are introduced to Phase 2 which marks the start of systematic phonic work. Grapheme-phoneme correspondence is introduced. The process of segmenting whole words and selecting letters to represent those phonemes is taught writing the letters to encode words. Phase 3 completes the teaching of the alphabet and then moves on to cover sounds represented by more than one letter, learning one representation for each of the 44 phonemes. At this stage just one spelling is given for each phoneme. When children become secure they continue onto Phase 4 where they start to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants. No new phonemes are introduced at this phase.

It is expected that children will enter Phase 5 as they begin year 1, broadening their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant. It is expected that children entering Year 2 will recap phase 5 and then move onto different spelling strategies including word specific spellings eg see/ sea, spelling of words with prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters where necessary. Also the accurate spelling of words containing unusual GPC's eg laughs, two.

The school spelling programs complement the phonics learning from Reception through to the end of KS2. The spelling of high frequency and tricky words are taught continuously throughout the phases.

How Phonics is taught

From EYFS to Year 2, Phonics is taught in a whole class, discrete, 30 minute, daily sessions. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds is used as a scheme for planning and delivery. Children's phonics knowledge is tracked from Nursery on a school pro forma.

Children access reading books which complement the phonics they are learning and are encouraged to use a range of decoding strategies from an Early age. These reading books follow Big Cat Collins. Reading books are sent home each week via children's ebook accounts.

Decoding Strategies:

1. Phonics- blending and segmenting

2.- Word recognition- breaking up the word, looking for words within words

3.- context- using pictures/ diagrams: using understanding about the topic

4.- Grammatical- using punctuation; known prefixes and suffixes

Phonics Assessment

Children’s progress is continually reviewed to allow for teachers to see any gaps in knowledge. Children are formally assessed at the end of each half term.

The National Phonics screening check is performed in June of Year 1. The purpose of the screening check is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. The children who did not meet the required standard for the check in year 1 enter again in year 2 with additional support. As children enter KS2 provision is made for those children still requiring daily phonics, through interventions.

To have a consistency approach throughout Phonics at Holly Grove we follow the same scheme throughout the school, ensuring spellings are taught through decoding the phonemes in each word. Children who have passed the phonics screening check move on and follow the ‘Little Wandle Spelling’ programme.

Phonics Check results

83% of Year 1 children (June 2022)

86% of Year 1 children (June 2023)

84% of Year 1 children (June 2024)

Prediction for Year 1 children 83% (June 2025)