Phonics
Children in Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage One (KS1) are taught phonics using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised programme. This programme is a five phase, systematic synthetic phonics programme which is designed to help children become fluent readers. It focuses on daily high-quality sessions which teaches children the correspondences between letters, in written language, and sounds, in spoken language. These correspondences help children to learn to read and spell words.
In daily phonics lessons, children are taught how to:
- Recognise the sounds that individual letters make
- Identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make e.g 'sh' or 'igh'
- Blend these sounds together from left to right to read a word
- Hear and say each sound in a word in order to segment and write the word.
Phase One of the programme is crucial and teaches the foundation skills in Nursery and revisited in Reception. By the end of Reception, children are expected to be secure in Phase Two, Three and Four. By the end of Year 1, children are expected to be secure in Phase Five. By the end of KS1 (Year 2), we aim for all children to be secure decoders, with a focus on spelling rules and patterns. For those children who are not on track, we provide additional support and intervention.
Phonic check
At the end of Year 1, children take a phonic screening check. The check is administered by a KS1 teacher. Children are asked to read 40 real words and 40 pseudo words (we call them alien words to the children). The check is used to assess each child’s ability to read unknown words. If a child does not pass the check we must administer another check at the end of Year 2. Children who leave KS1 without passing the phonic check will have additional phonics intervention in KS2.
Useful documents and websites to help you support your child at home:
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised -
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents
Mr Thorne phonics -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOW3pB2KwGA&list=PL-NtaWzW5Jn2c7V1CyqiMh7vxFri8fPQ2
Tricky Words -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMyssfAUx0
When Two Vowels go Walking -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fb3Pdt8kxg
Games -
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk