Phonics

What is the vision for Phonics at The Phoenix Primary School and Nursery?

 Our vision for Phonics, is that every child achieves the success in reading that they deserve, right from the start. The sooner children learn to read, the greater their success at school. This is why we put reading at the heart of what we do.

By ensuring high-quality phonics teaching, children will:

• acquire and secure decoding skills to enable them to read fluently and automatically
• comprehend sufficiently what they have read
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• have a solid base upon which to build for their next stage of learning, as they progress through school
• through reading opportunities, develop cultural, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.
• be equipped with the skills of language, which are essential to ensure they can participate fully as a member of society, including having the ability to speak, read and write fluently and confidently.

Phonics is seen as a discipline that is open to all; regardless of ability, gender, cultural background or ethnicity.

How is this vision for Phonics to be achieved?

 At The Phoenix Primary School and Nursery, we use a systematic synthetic phonics programme that has been validated by the DfE, called Read, Write, Inc. Each session gives children the opportunity to revisit previous learning, be taught new skills, practice together and apply what they have learned.

Children who take part in Phonics learning, starting in the Nursery, will:

• initially, develop phonological awareness, (the sound structures of language). Phonological awareness allows one to attend to, discriminate, remember, and manipulate sounds at the sentence, word, syllable, and phoneme (sound) levels
• learn grapheme-phoneme correspondence
• learn to segment and blend whole words, selecting graphemes to represent the phonemes taught
• learn to read common exception words
• learn the names of the letters of the alphabet
• learn to write sentences
• develop their vocabulary and comprehension. 

Learning is planned according to children’s need and advice is sought from the SENCO, when necessary.

How does the school know if the Phonics curriculum has been effective?

 Children who have followed the school’s Phonics curriculum will be fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. They will meet the higher expectations of the National Curriculum, through effective teaching, learning and assessment, leading to accelerated progress. Children will be prepared for the National Curriculum Tests that they will undertake further into their school career.

Children meet their Reading Early Learning Goal at the end of The Early Years Foundation Stage.

The vast majority of Year 1 children meet the expected standard in phonic decoding, in The National Phonic Screening.

The children who do not meet the required standard in Year 1, receive additional support to help them reach the standard in Year 2.

As children enter KS2, provision is made for those children still requiring support with reading and spelling.

 The Ultimate Guide to Phonological Awareness, published by Essex County Council, is used to assess children’s phonological awareness.

Children’s learning of phonemes is assessed half termly using the assessment tools provided with Read, Write Inc.

In preparation for the National Phonic screening, children are assessed termly using a mock paper.