PHONICS
at The Winterton Federation
Children in the EYFS take part in regular planned activities to develop their phonic knowledge. These include activities and games to support the development of rhythms and rhymes, alliteration and oral sound blending. At the end of Nursery, for the children who are ready and throughout Reception, the children take part in a daily group phonics session following the RWI programme. Teachers in the EYFS Reception classes plan to teach children:
- grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) correspondences in a clearly defined, incremental sequence.
- to apply the skill of blending phonemes, in order, to read words.
- to apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes (sounds) to spell words.
- that blending and segmenting are reversible processes.
- how to articulate phonemes clearly and precisely.
From the Summer Term, children in Nursery begin to learn the first five phonemes and graphemes introduced to them through Read, Write Inc., a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. Prior to this, children regularly take part in sound walks and listening games, engage in high quality stories and begin to learn key phrases such as ‘magnet eyes’ and ‘my turn, your turn’.
Children become grouped for phonics sessions based on the level of challenge they require after a few weeks in Reception. Children remain grouped by their reading needs until they finish the programme. Phonics sessions are fast paced. All groups follow a similar structure where children are actively participating throughout. Within each session, children practise their phoneme and grapheme knowledge, word reading, spelling, fluency and comprehension skills. Children are taught to read decodable words (Green Words), non-decodable words (Red Words) and pseudo words (known to the children as alien words). Children are given a copy of their story book (Red Group onwards) from their phonics session to read at home. This is to further enhance their fluency. Children also take home an unseen book that is closely matched to their level, thus providing a little more challenge but also remaining accessible enough for them to enjoy.
Approaches to Writing: There are three dedicated writing sessions a week across Years 1 to 6. Writing is frequently linked to texts introduced through comprehension sessions, in turn reinforcing the children’s understanding of key texts. Writing expectations are shared through teacher models and shared writing opportunities. These expectations are reinforced through the use of marking ladders and incorporate opportunities for self-assessment and peer assessment as the children progress through the Federation. Learning is differentiated for individuals within each class through ‘steps to success’, resources such as writing frames and adult support. Guided Writing groups are identified using AfL strategies from previous lessons and, where necessary, guided groups are planned in for the following day with an identified common current learning need. In KS1, Pie Corbett’s Talk for Writing strategies are an integral part of planning and preparation for writing, including the use of boxing up and story mapping activities. All children are encouraged to edit and improve writing, this forms part of teacher modelling. All children begin learning to write through our strong foundations curriculum.
We passionately believe that teaching children to read and write independently, as quickly as possible, is one of the core purposes of a primary school. Our intention is to have 100% of children passing the phonics screening and 90% of children at Age Related Expectations in reading by the end of Y2. These fundamental skills not only hold the keys to the rest of the curriculum but also have a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances. Using the RWI phonics program we teach children to:
- read easily, fluently and with good understanding
- develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
In practice, children learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and are taught how to blend these sounds to decode (read) words. We start by teaching children to read and blend the first thirty Set 1 sounds. Once they have conquered this skill, they start reading stories and texts that have words made up of the sounds they know. This means that they can embed and apply their phonic knowledge and start to build their reading fluency.
Once secure, children learn Set 2 and Set 3 sounds and then read texts with increasingly more complex sounds and graphemes. Throughout this process, there is a focus on comprehension, reading with expression and reading for enjoyment.
Children are taught in small groups which reflect their phonic knowledge and reading fluency. We regularly assess children so that they are taught in a RWI group which matches their phonic knowledge. We make sure that pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ability to read ‘tricky words’; so they experience early reading success and gain confidence that they are readers.
How you can help at home
You can help your child by following these key points:
- Make sure that your child brings their RWI Storybook into school every day!
- Practise the sounds they know at home. These are the sounds in the Speed Sound Chart at the start of the storybooks.
- Listen to your child read, both their RWI storybook and Book Bag Book, every day.
- Read to them and always discuss the story you are reading to try to build your child’s comprehension skills, inference and understanding.
- Talk to them! The most important thing you can do is to talk to your child and listen to them when they are talking to you. Try to extend their vocabulary range and their skill at talking in increasingly more complex sentences. For example, try to teach them alternative words for ideas, or nouns they already know. Can they think of adjectives to describe things (nouns)?
