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Phonics Policy
At Naphill and Walters Ash we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One and believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a whole language approach that promotes a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.
The Rose Report (2006) emphasised high quality phonics as an important part of the word decoding skills required by children to develop higher level whole language and comprehension skills. In the foreword of the Reading Framework (2021) it mentions that the effective teaching of reading requires not just a systematic synthetic phonics programme but its consistent implementation in every class.
This policy is aimed at reinforcing a consistent, high quality approach to teaching phonics across the Foundation Stage (Reception), Key Stage One (KS1) and on into Key Stage Two (KS2) for children who still need this further support.
Phonics is taught daily in Reception and KS1 in ability streamed groups. We follow the Letters and Sounds teaching order and use many elements and resources from the Read, Write Inc. scheme. In KS2 interventions are based around the use of Read, Write Inc in order to meet each child’s specific needs.
Aims:
Objectives:
Expectations:
Reception Year
Year 1
Year 2
Key Stage Two
Teaching:
Planning for phonics will be done separately from English but with the understanding that good phonics teaching should link to the literacy needs of the children within English lessons and across the curriculum.
Each phonics lesson should include the following sections:
A good lesson should include – teacher lead exposition, whole class, group and individual work, tricky word vocabulary and lots of praise!
Homework:
In Reception and KS1 phonics homework is sent home weekly. Phonetically decodable reading books are sent home once children recognise initial graphemes and are able to segment and blend words with growing confidence. Children have ‘tricky’ words sent home.
A Phonics meeting is held for Reception parents in the Autumn Term and a Phonics Screening meeting held for Year 1 Parents in the Spring Term.
Assessment:
Teachers to use daily formative assessment to inform future lessons and summative assessment (half termly) to inform effective provision for all children, using this to plan and deliver well differentiated lessons that engage and challenge children within the lesson.
Pupil progress is assessed using our phonics assessment sheets for each Phase, children are grouped by ability and gap analysis is completed for each group. This summative assessment should inform the rate at which children progress through the phases and secure a sound understanding of phonetics. Towards the Phonics Screening check Year 1 pupils will be given practise papers to identify specific skills or any gaps in learning.
All Year 1 children take the statutory Phonics Screening Check in the Summer Term. Those who do not meet the pass mark will be given support and intervention programmes in Year 2 to provide them with sufficient knowledge and understanding to re-take the Phonics Screening Check and obtain a pass mark. Those children who do not obtain the required level set by the Phonics Screening Check will receive phonics teaching in the first term of Year 3 – which will be further supported throughout the year and across KS2 with a phonics and/or spelling intervention programme.
Glossary of Phonic Terms:
Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound in a word
Grapheme – a letter or group of letters representing one sound (phoneme)
GPC (grapheme phoneme correspondence) – the individual letters or letter strings which represent individual sounds
Vowels – in English, the vowels are a e i o and u, and sometimes y.
Consonants – a speech sound that is not a vowel, in English, b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x y z
Adjacent consonants / consonant clusters – two (or three) letters making two (or three) sounds (previously known as blends). Example: the first three letters of strap are adjacent consonants.
CVC, CCVC, CCVCC etc.- the abbreviations used to describe the order of sounds such as consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant words (CCVCC). Example: cat, ship and sheep are all CVC words. The words black and prize could be described as CCVC words.
Digraph – two letters which together make one sound. There are different types of digraph: vowel, consonant and split digraphs.
Consonant digraph – two consonants which make one sound. Example: sh, ch, th, ph
Vowel digraph – a digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel Example: ea ay ai ar
Split digraph – two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word. Example a-e as in make or late; i-e as in size or write.
Trigraph – three letters which together make one sound. Example: dge, igh
‘Special friend’ – phrase used by Read Write Inc. to describe any group of letters that make one sound (digraph, split diagraph or trigraph)
Fred-Talk – phrase used by Read Write Inc. to describe the process of sound talk (Fred the frog only speaks in sounds). Example: c-a-t (cat)
Blending – the process of using phonics for reading. Children identify and synthesise/blend the phonemes in order to make a word. Example: s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap.
Segmenting – the process of using phonics for writing. Children listen to the whole word and break it down into the constituent phonemes, choosing an appropriate grapheme to represent each phoneme. Example: ship can be segmented as sh-i-p.
Fred-Fingers – phrase used by Read Write Inc. to describe the process of segmenting a word into sounds to spell. Children allocate one sound to each finger as they segment the word.
Appendix 1:
Letters and Sounds Overview (www.letters-and-sounds.com)
Phase 1:
Concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonics work which starts in Phase 2.
Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds; general sound discrimination – instrumental sounds; general sound discrimination – body percussion; rhythm and rhyme; alliteration; voice sounds; and oral blending and segmenting.
Each aspect containing three strands: tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination), listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) and talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension).
Phase 2:
Set 1: s, a, t, p
Set 2: i, n, m, d
Set 3: g, o, c, k
Set 4: ck, e, u, r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
As soon as each set of letters is introduced, children will be encouraged to blend words to read and segment words to spell.
Phase 3:
Set 6: j, v, w, x
Set 7: y, z, zz, qu
Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng, nk
Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
During Phase 3 children will also learn letter names though an alphabet song.
Phase 4:
No new graphemes are introduced. Focus on consolidation of Phase 2 and 3 sounds and reading and spelling words with adjacent consonants e.g. trap, string, milk.
Phase 5:
In Phase 5 children learn alternative graphemes for phonemes they already know e.g. ‘ai’ as in rain, ‘ay’ as in day and ‘a-e’ as in make.
ay ou ie ea oy ir ue aw ew oe au ow (snow) ey eer are a-e e-e i-e o-e u-e c g y y
They will also learn alternative pronunciations for graphemes e.g. ‘ea’ in tea, head and break.
Phase 6:
In Phase 6 the main aim is for children to become more fluent readers and more accurate spellers.
Appendix 2:
Read, Write Inc phrases to support learning of special friend sounds:
Phase 3:
ch – ch ch ch choo!
sh – shhhhhhh!
th – thank you
ng – a thing on a string
nk – I think I stink
ai – snail in the rain
ee – what can you see?
igh – fly high
oa – goat on a boat
oo – poo at the zoo
oo – look at a book
ar – start the car
or – shut the door
ur – nurse with a purse
ow – brown cow
oi – spoil the boy
ear – hear with your ear
air – that’s not fair!
ure – sure it’s pure
er – a better letter
Phase 5
ay – may I play?
ou – shout it out
ie – fried pie
ea – cup of tea
oy – toy for a boy
ir – whirl and twirl
ue – blue glue
aw – yawn at dawn
ew – chew the stew
oe – oh my toe!
au – launch the astronaut
ow – blow the snow
ey – wonky donkey
eer – cheerful deer
are – share and care
a-e – make a cake
e-e – even Steven
i-e – nice smile
o-e – phone home
u-e – huge brute
c – ice city
g – giant giraffe
y – fly by
y – hungry baby
Pronouncing sounds correctly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXcabDUg7Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6OiU2h3sUI&t=28s
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/learn-to-read-phonics/