Our Phonics Intention
At Brudenell Primary School we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers who can use phonic strategies in their spelling, by the end of Key Stage One. We believe this is achievable through a combination of high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a language rich environment that promotes a ‘Reading and writing for pleasure’ culture.
• To teach children aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme to aid reading, writing and spelling development.
• To encourage the use of segmenting and blending so that decoding skills provide a sound foundation for reading, writing and spelling.
• To ensure the teaching of phonics is lively, interactive and investigative.
• To enable children to use phonic awareness across the curriculum.
• To ensure that children know the 44 phonemes within the English language.
• To teach children to recognise the graphemes within words and associate them with the appropriate phoneme when reading.
• To provide children with strategies to identify and decode ‘high frequency words.’
- To recognise and recall ‘tricky words.’
• To provide consistent, high quality phonics teaching that ensures all children have a strong foundation upon which to tackle the complex processes of reading and writing.
• To ensure that the teaching of synthetic phonics is systematic and progressive throughout the foundation stage and key stage one.
• To ensure that intervention map and provision enables staff to deliver a consistent approach to delivering phonic teaching to pupils who have significant gaps in phonetical knowledge.
Our Phonics Implementaion
At Brudenell Primary School, we follow the systematic approach as laid out in the All Aboard scheme.
Phonics is taught separately from the main English lessons and children are taught and lessons resourced according to their age and phonics stage of learning.
Each Phonics lesson will include the following stages and will last approximately 20 minutes:
• Revise – Recap the previous graphemes and words
• Teach – Introduce a new grapheme, words or skills
• Practise – Develop GPCs (grapheme phoneme correspondences) /read and spell new words
• Apply – Use the new graphemes / words in games and activities to secure knowledge
Phonics in Nursery
Children in Nursery are exposed to phonics throught sessions and receive a regular phonics focused activity each week. The seven aspects od Phase one phonics are used, in order to help the children to recognise different sounds and to discriminate between them. The seven aspects of phase one are:
Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds
Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds
Aspect 3: General sound discrimination – body percussion
Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme
Aspect 5: Alliteration
Aspect 6: Voice sounds
Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting
This is taught as a spiral curriculum, where each aspect is revisited and built upon over the course of the year. Each aspect comprises of:
· Tuning into sounds (sound discrimination)
· Listening to and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing)
· Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension)
Activities within the seven aspects are designed to help children:
1. listen attentively;
2. enlarge their vocabulary;
3. speak confidently to adults and other children;
4. discriminate phonemes;
5. reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear, in order, all through the word;
6. use sound-talk to segment words into phonemes
Impact – NPM all through year 1 got less than 5 in his phonics. After 8 weeks working on rapid phonics in year 2 with MM he went from scoring 5-30. “ I feel super happy” said NPM – Dec 2021.
Phonics in Reception
Children in Reception will be taught a discrete phonics session daily for a 20 minute period. Phonics skills are also embedded in writing and reading tasks in Literacy sessions, but embedded in the areas of provision and wider curriculum.
Every year we respond to the children who join us in Reception, but we are fully aware that each cohort is different and we amend our pace and implementation to reflect this.
We aim to follow this plan for progression;
- Spend the first few weeks recapping or teaching phase 1 phonic skills as needed.
- Begin on phase 2 phonemes (see appendix .1.)
- Progress to phase .3.
- Assess and differentiate teaching sessions
- Consolidate where necessary or begin to challenge individuals on phase .4.
Children are taught phonics to the end of phase .3. as a whole class group because we believe that they should all be exposed and experience quality wave 1 teaching. Any individual learning or needs are targeted throughout the year. We aim to have children secure in phase 3 phonics by the end of reception. Some children will be able to progress to phase 4. Children who are not ready for phase 4 will work with adults on securing their knowledge of phase 3 phonics. Children are taught the “tricky words” and aim to read and write the high frequency words for Phases 2 to 4 before they enter Year 1.
Phonics in Year 1
Children in year 1 will be taught a discrete phonics session daily for a 25 minute period. Phonics skills are also embedded in writing and reading tasks in Literacy sessions, but embedded in the areas of provision and wider curriculum. The aim in Year 1 is to ensure all children have completed Phase 4 and 5 and be ready to begin the Spelling Shed programme, which aligns with the English national curriculum, upon entry into Year 2. We aim for all children to read and write all the common exception words for Year 1.
Every year we respond to the children who join us in year 1, but we are fully aware that each cohort is different and we amend our pace and implementation to reflect this.
We aim to follow this plan for progression;
- Spend the first few weeks recapping or teaching phase 3 phonic skills as needed.
- Begin on phase 3 phonemes (see appendix .1.)
- Progress to phase 5
- Assess and differentiate teaching sessions
- Consolidate where necessary and target individuals who are not secure.
Children are taught phonics to the end of phase 5 as a whole class group because we believe that they should all be exposed and experience quality wave 1 teaching, For some children with SEND teaching will be in smaller groups. Any individual learning or needs are targeted throughout the year. We aim to have children secure in phase 5 phonics by the end of year 1. Some children will be able to progress to phase 6. Children who are not ready for phase 5 will work with adults on securing their knowledge of phase 4 phonics. Children are taught the “tricky words” and aim to read and write the high frequency words for Phases 3 to 5 before they enter Year 2. They should have plenty of practise in recognising ‘Alien’ or pseudo words, in readiness for the Phonic Screening Check and to give them the confidence to read any word.
Phonics in Year 2
Children in year 2 who have not passed the phonics screening test will continue to be supported in developing their phonological awareness. Children needing this support will work in small groups following a similar lesson structure using rapid phonics as a teaching resource.
Resources
All phonics teachers have a range of resources to use which are appropriate for the level at which the children are working. These include the following;
A range of reading book schemes are used across school that support each phase and stage of phonics teaching. Staff allocate books according to the stage being taught. We use a range of books and schemes so that children do not get the same book repeatedly. Staff will always choose a book that is linked to the phase and stage being taught but will sometimes challenge or support a child by sending home books that are of interest and encourage enjoyment in reading.
Phonics teaching will always be supported by the use of manipulatives and a range of activities and resources to address a varied and inclusive learning approach.
We use spelling shed in school and the children can access this at home to support their phonic knowledge and practice.
