Phonics

As a key step in children’s journey to become lifelong readers, Phonics is prioritised in Early Years and Key Stage 1. We teach reading with a “phonics first” approach, following the First Class Phonics scheme of work, which breaks learning down into manageable steps for children whilst regularly recapping previous learning. This gives children the essential skills of segmenting and blending words whilst also developing a solid understanding of grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

All children in EYFS have daily, targeted Phonics sessions, and teaching links closely with a range of phonetically-decodable books for children to use both in and outside of school.

Children’s progress is regularly assessed throughout the Phonics session. Teachers will measure how confident children are at recalling different sounds and letters, and also how well they can apply learning in a written context. In both individual and guided Reading sessions, teachers will assess whether children are reading the sounds with increased fluency.

During the summer term, Year 1 children will also be assessed using the national phonics screening check. They will work individually alongside a member of staff to segment and blend a range of ‘real’ and ‘alien’ words. Results will be shared with parents in the child’s Summer report and additional support will be provided with those children who have not met the requirements. We will also measure the success of our Phonics scheme using a KS1 Reading test, to reflect the fluency and understanding of children’s reading.

Reading

“Pupils read regularly and in a range of contexts.”

Ofsted, 2016.

Get help with phonics from the sites below.

Phonics Play

Read with Phonics