Phonics 

Rationale

At Capel-le-Ferne Primary School we understand the importance of phonics as an crucial component of reading development; we strive to ensure all children become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One.

Aims

• To teach children aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme awareness in order to encourage good spelling.
• To encourage routine, repetition and consolidation, so that spelling becomes automatic.
• To encourage children to segment and blend efficiently.

To provide children with a secure grounding in reading at an early stage, enabling them to develop fluency

Objectives

• To learn to read and write all 44 graphemes in the English language.
• To ensure that the teaching of phonics is interactive and consistent.
• To encourage children to apply their phonic skills in all curriculum areas.

The Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

The school uses the Tower Hamlet Phonics Programme developed by Ann Smallberger using the phases as in Letters and Sounds, Phonics is taught rigorously, regularly and consistently. Our principal aim is to develop the children’s phonological awareness, ability to segment and blend words and read common exception words on sight - to become fluent readers!

Expectation

Reception - To teach phonics daily for 20 minutes from the child’s start date and twice a day if needed until December. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will entail new learning; Friday will be for revision and consolidation. All children will have completed phase three by term 5.

Children will also have common exception words to learn.

Year One - To teach phonics daily for 20 minutes, twice a day if needed. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be new learning; Friday will be for revision and consolidation. All children have completed phase 5 by the end of term 5.

Children will also have common exception words to learn.

Year Two - To teach phonics daily for 20 minutes, for 5 weeks to revise phase 5 before moving on to the National Curriculum spelling patterns from the new framework.

Key Stage Two – To teach their year groups spelling patterns according to the National Curriculum new framework. Children who still have gaps in their phonic knowledge will continue to receive daily, 'teacher led' phonic interventions tailored to meet individual needs. This will be monitored rigorously and assessed on a 3 weekly cycle.

Phonics across the Curriculum

Children are encouraged to use their phonic skills across all curriculum subjects. All teachers and teaching assistants model the correct articulation of the phonemes and children are given opportunities to articulate individual phonemes. We have a strong emphasis on the application of phonic knowledge at the point of learning. Planning ensures each phonics session shows the current phase and sound to be taught

Phonics Planning

Whole class teaching of phonics follows the lesson structure demonstrated and provided during the whole staff inset training day led by Anne Smallberger. The week’s phonics focus will be recorded on the weekly literacy plan.

If the class teacher is absent the class TA will teach the phonics session using the focus set out on literacy plan. All TAs have received the same phonics training as the teachers. They will be encouraged to deliver sections of the phonics lesson on a regular basis to ensure consistency of approach.

Differentiation

Children struggling within the phase will be identified quickly - they will receive additional, teacher led, intervention time on the same day to revisit the current sound being taught, enabling them to 'keep up' with the whole class delivery.

Assessment

At the end of each phase in phonics children will be assessed on their progress, when 80% of children are efficient with that phase the class will move to the next phase.

Year Two and Key Stage Two children have weekly spelling tests relating to the spelling pattern being taught.  

National Phonic Screening

All children in Year One will be screened using the National Assessment materials in Term 6, end of June. If the children in Year One fail the screening they will be retested when they are in Year Two.

Resources

All resources for each phase have been made and are stored

All children receiving phonic lessons and interventions have access to decodable phonic reading books linked to the sounds within the phase they are currently working on. 

We also have other phase resources stored in the AENCo office.