Phonics

 

Early reading

Whilst many children will have completed a full phonics programme at infant school, when they start at Key stage 2, we aim to assess each child to identify gaps in their phonics knowledge – in both reading and spelling – and base our Year 3 phonics teaching and progression on these gaps using Twinkl phonics to support the children.  In Year 4, children are reassessed and the same approach is taken; basing teaching and progression on the gaps identified.

On entry to Year 3, all pupils’ phonic knowledge is assessed. Where needed, daily phonics is taught, using our SSP Twinkl. The children in Year 3 have a rigorous, systematic synthetics phonics teaching programme for early reading and writing success.  These pupils will start off with regular interactive phonics lessons and activities to teach sounds, blending, grapheme-phoneme correspondences, letter formation and pronunciation. Pupils who are still learning phonics will have home reading scheme books which contain a blend of decodable and non-decodable books and we encourage children to read a variety of texts to ensure a balance between poetry, fiction and nonfiction. These reading books are matched to the child’s phonetic development and reading ability which is in line with our progression in phonics.

Lowest 20%: To support our lowest 20% of readers to make progress we identify their gaps in phonic knowledge, target these with interventions where appropriate, phonics reading books, guided reading groups targeting their reading needs and regular reading to adults.

During phonic sessions, children will learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and how to blend these for reading and writing.

 

In addition, phonics is taught through interventions with specific children who still have gaps in their learning.