Phonics

INTENT:

For every child to be able to decode words accurately to support them in becoming confident, fluent readers and have a love of reading. Children should be able to apply phoneme and grapheme knowledge (to help them decode unfamiliar words) allowing them to help build their fluency and comprehension to give them full access to the curriculum.

IMPLEMENTATION

Reading Skills lessons are taught 4 times a week. Children who are not at expected standard in reading and have gaps in phonics have phonics interventions as part of their Reading Skills lessons.
Children are recapping phonics knowledge and applying it in the lessons and in their weekly spellings.
Following the Little Wandle scheme, children read texts in these lessons which have a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge.
Children have opportunities to read 1:1 within these sessions with an adult.
Children who are still below the expected standard in reading at the end of year 3 will continue to have phonics interventions to support fluency.

IMPACT:

On entry to year 3, children were assessed based on their phonics knowledge, fluency (teacher assessment) and comprehension. All children who have received phonics interventions have made progress with their decoding ability (Spring 2023).

The amount of children needing reading interventions decreases throughout KS2. In the academic year 2022-2023, 38 children across year 3 and 4 are taught phonics during their Reading Skills session. In year 6, no children need to receive a phonics intervention to support their reading fluency.

Learning our Sounds:

When we are learning our sounds, it is really important we pronounce the sounds correctly. This supports us with our spellings, reading and our speech. By using sound buttons, this helps us to segment the sounds in a word to help us read it, pronounce it and to check if we have spelt the word correctly.

When sounding out, it is important we do not schwa! Schwaing is when you say ‘cuh’ instead of ‘c’ and ‘muh’ instead of ‘m’.