Phonics
Early readers have daily phonics lessons using Twinkl Phonics, which give children the stepping-stones to break down unknown words into readable chunks. Phonics is a very useful tool for children trying to make sense of texts that they do not understand.
Phonics is taught daily across EYFS and KS1, following the Twinkl Phonics scheme. The DfE approved scheme follows a progressive, systematic approach to the teaching of phonics from entry to school at 3 years of age, with the expectation that pupils will be fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One.
First Phonics in Nursery
We provide a range of focussed experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:
- sharing high-quality stories and poems
- learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
- activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
- attention to high-quality language.
We strive to ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin the next step of their early reading journey - learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.
From Reception to the end of Year 2, children work in small groups according to which level they are working on and their progress in assessed regularly, at least once is assessed each half term. Careful assessment ensures that teachers are aware of each individual’s needs and where extra intervention is necessary, this is provided.
Extra interventions are provided for those children who may be at risk of falling behind and those that do not pass the Phonics Check in Year 1, to enable them to pass it in Year 2. In KS2, some children still need extra phonics input and our Phonics lead teaches groups from Year 3, as well as class teachers and assistants teaching intervention groups. We are developing the use of Twinkl's Codebreakers - a set of phonics lessons using decodable texts for older children.
In all classrooms, a large sounds poster is displayed, which shows the different ways of representing each grapheme. This helps children to be independent in their reading and spelling of new or unfamiliar words.
The five part phonics lesson
