Phonics

Phonics Curriculum Statement

“Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way - starting with the easiest sounds and progressing through to the most complex – it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. It is particularly helpful for children aged 5–7. Almost all children who receive good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and to read for enjoyment.” Department for Education

At Southbroom St James Academy teachers follow the Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme, validated by the Department for Education.ELS teaches children to read using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. It is designed to be used as part of a learning environment that is rich in talk and story, where children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills to become fluent independent readers and writers. 

ELS teaches children to: 

• decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently. 
• encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately. 

ELS whole-class, daily phonics teaching begins from the first days of Year 3. Through the rigorous ELS teaching programme, children build an immediate understanding of the relationship between the sounds they can hear and say (phonemes) and the written sounds (graphemes). 

A key feature of the ELS programme is practice and repetition. Every single aspect of the lesson is modelled for children and they have many opportunities to: 

• Hear the sound or word 
• Say the sound or word 
• See the sound or word 
• Read the word
• Write the word
• Use new vocabulary

During their time at the school, each child gains experience of each of the phases described below:

Phase 1 - Experimenting with sounds.

Children identify sounds through play and experimentation. They are encouraged to listen to and discern the difference between sounds and create a wide range of sounds for themselves.

Phase 2.

The children will be learning individual sounds and developing their skills at blending and segmenting these sounds for spelling and reading. At this stage parents should be encouraging their children to play sound games and practice sounds at home i.e. I-Spy. At this stage children begin to make CVC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) words i.e. cat.

Phase 3.

Once the children know all their letters, common sounds such as sh, th, st, pr, and ch are introduced.

At this stage parents should be encouraging their child to blend and segment words when they are playing games with words and /or reading. At this stage children practise making CVC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) words i.e. cat and begin to make CCVC (i.e. ship) and CVCC (i.e. much) words.

Phase 4.

Common end sounds i.e. ng, ll, ff, ld,.lp are introduced.

At this stage parents should be encouraging their child to blend and segment words when they are playing games with words and /or reading.

At this stage children practise making CCVC (i.e. ship) and develop their range of CVCC (i.e. mend) words.

Phase 5.

The sounds represented by more than one letter are taught i.e. ai, ea, ir etc.

At this stage parents should be encouraging their child to blend and segment words when they are playing games with words and /or reading. The children are now developing their knowledge and skills with vowel diagraphs( two vowels that when put together make a new sound) such as ai as in maid, ea as in bear and ir as in bird. They also work with split vowel diagraphs such as a-e as in fare.

Phase 6.

Children will learn word families and review their knowledge. The children at this stage and beyond develop their spelling further and meet the full range of spelling rules, develop knowledge of word roots and meanings and use common suffixes and prefixes to build their vocabulary.

The children work through each phase over a 6 week period and at the end of the phase their knowledge and skills are reviewed and next steps identified.

Beyond Phase 6.

The children continue to be taught spelling and each year group is taught the statutory spellings alongside vocabulary to build their knowledge and experience further. This continues into Year 6 where the children are deepening their skills and knowledge ready for the transition to secondary.

Phonics in KS2

During the Autumn term in Year 3, children are reassessed on their phonic knowledge. This test helps us to identify children who have gaps in their phonic knowledge and may need further support in Year 3. The assessments  are low-key and we endeavour to make it stress-free for the children. The children are assessed via Phonics Tracker on their phase level, HRSW and blending. Parents are informed as to whether their child is receiving daily phonics sessions.

Reading at home

The schools main reading scheme is ‘Oxford Reading Tree’ however this is supplemented with other schemes including: Raintree Engage Literacy. Those children in Year 3 to Year 6 who continue to need to take purely phonetically decodable books home do so and these reflect their learning in class. The reading scheme across school is constantly evolving and as a result children are provided with books that not only challenge but also interest them and encourage a love of reading.

Why is my child re-reading the same text multiple times over the course of a week? Re-reading is a fundamental part of building an orthographic map – we can’t do this without re-reading the texts and without doing this, we won’t be able to read fluently. The purpose of decodable books is that children should be able to read everything independently and with fluency. We need fluency for comprehension. If children read a book once and return it, they won’t have orthographically mapped the words within. We need to read each word a minimum of 4 times to reliably recognised the sound to spelling correspondence and then read this word a number more time (child dependent) to be able to read it without decoding.