Phonics and Early Reading
"Reading is the gateway for children that makes all other learning possible." - Barack Obama

Intent

At Mexborough St John, we aim to provide a high quality reading and phonics curriculum which will allow pupils to read fluently, with understanding and enjoyment so they are ready for the next stage of their education by the time they leave primary school.

Our curriculum is consistent throughout school, within phonic learning and early reading lessons included daily from FS1 through to those who need it in Year 6, in order for each child to reach their full potential and ensure than reading is as little a barrier to life and learning is possible. We promote a love and joy for reading, with each class being able to enjoy books daily in their classrooms either by listening to class texts or enjoying books from their classroom reading area.

Implementation

This policy promotes best practice and establishes consistency in Teaching and Learning across the whole school. It aims to ensure that all pupils are provided with high quality learning experiences to develop pupil’s life-long love of learning.

We follow Little Wandle: Letters and Sounds Revised from FS2 to Y1 daily and beyond for any child that needs it further up school. We teach daily phonics lessons to those accessing the scheme, where the children learn and embed graphemes to be able to read a wider variety of words and texts. During a lesson, children recap previously taught sounds and read words including these in order for them to become embedded as well as recapping tricky words. They then learn a new sound, read and spell single words including these as well as sentences. The order of which each sound and tricky word is taught can be found in the appendix.

Children get the opportunity to further practise their phonics skills in our ‘reading practise’ sessions which occur three times per week. These sessions are split into three key focuses:

Day one – decoding. Children focus on segmenting and blending, applying their phonic knowledge and recognising tricky words.
Day two – prosody. During this session, children re-read the text then practise using prosidy and expression in their voices to help them read like a reader! They learn how to choose words to emphasise when reading aloud and appropriate ways to use their voice to create an exciting read.
Day three – comprehension. Once the children get to day three, their understanding is checked by being asked a range of questions about the text they have read. They practise information retrieval, inference, retelling and vocabulary skills to show a comprehensive understanding of what they have read.

After completing this book in school, the children then gain access to this book as an e-book which we encourage children to read at home successfully. As well as gaining access to an e-book, children also take home a ‘challenge book’ from the reading scheme; this is a book that they haven’t read yet, is linked as closely as possible to their phonic stage and is changed weekly.

Phonics is closely linked to other aspects of the curriculum, particularly in writing. Children gain the opportunity to apply their learning into written work and staff ensure that children are using the appropriate phonetic spelling in their writing as well as challenging the spellings of tricky words that they have learned so far.

Differentiation for vulnerable groups (SEND, Pupil Premium, etc.)

Children with SEND or other challenges to their learning, the pace that they move through the phonics scheme will be at their rate of learning. Children may access the scheme as a small group, during intervention ‘catch up’ sessions or through extra reading practise in order to close as many gaps as possible and create more confidence around reading abilities.

Impact

Impact in phonics is measured by half-termly assessments where gaps in learning are identified and plugged as appropriate through intervention, additional one to one reading practise and quality first teaching. As children progress, they will move through the reading scheme where the phonics will match the appropriate phase of phonics. This is closely monitored by class teachers to ensure children are reading at the correct level for them.

In Year One, all children sit the Phonics Screening Check to assess their application of GPCs in real and ‘alien’ words. Should they not pass, they will get the chance to retake this in Year Two.

Phonics and reading reviews take place regularly in order for leadership to observe lessons and impact across school. Following these observation, teachers and teaching assistants are given feedback in order to maximise learning further such as observing good practice around school or completing additional CPD in a supportive way in order to ensure that children are achieving their maximum potential.

Assessment for Learning (formative assessment) is recorded against statements from the reading national curriculum statements for each year group.

What is phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.

Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.

Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.

Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch.

Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out. For example, when a child is taught the sounds for the letters t, p, a and s, they can start to build up the words: “tap”, “taps”, “pat”, “pats” and “sat”.

What is synthetic phonics?

Synthetic phonics is the most widely used approach associated with the teaching of reading in which phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word.

Phonics Screening Check

In Key Stage 1, the children are assessed at the end of Year 1 using a Government Statutory Assessment Tool known as the Phonics Screening Check. This screening check confirms whether the child has mastered the phonetic code to an appropriate standard and will identify sounds needing further consolidation in Year 2. The children are assessed one to one by the reading leader, who is a familiar adult to the children. The children are asked to read a mixture of real and alien nonsense words

FAQs

How will the children know which words are ‘alien’ (nonsense) words?

The ‘alien’ words are always presented with a picture of an alien, so that the children know that they are not real words that they might recognise. They are very familiar with this concept and practise it every day during our Little Wandle phonics sessions. See picture below for an example of how the check is presented.

How will the phonics screening be administered?

Each child is taken through the screening check by a familiar teacher on a one to one basis. This will be in a quiet area and there is not a time limit.

Will we be told about our child’s results?

The results of the check will be issued before the end of the school year.

What is the pass mark?

The standard threshold pass mark for previous phonics screening checks has been 32/40. The threshold is always released shortly after the phonics screening check has taken place.

What happens if my child doesn’t pass the phonics screening check?

Any child that does not reach the standard threshold will sit the 2024 screening check when they are in Year 2.

When will the phonics screening take place?

The government requires that the check must be taken during a specific week in June. This academic year it will take place the week beginning Monday 10th June 2024. A pupil may only take the check the following week if they were absent during check week. If a pupil doesn’t take the check during this period and returns to school after the two week window, they must be recorded as absent.

How can we support our child out of school?

Please read our parent information for ideas of how to support your child at home. We also have a fantastic range of opportunities for parents and carers to observe how phonics is taught in Reception and Year 1. Miss Mappleback will contact parent's and carers to invite them to these workshops as children progress through the phonics scheme.

Which sounds will the phonics screening check focus on?

The check includes graphemes from all sets of sounds taught to the children since they started school.

Follow this link to view the Phonics Screening Check materials 2023

Phonics and Early Reading "Reading is the gateway for children that makes all other learning possible." - Barack Obama

Phonics and Early Reading
"Reading is the gateway for children that makes all other learning possible." - Barack Obama