Phonics
What is Phonics?
Phonics is making connections between the sounds (phonemes) of our spoken words and the letters that are used to write them down.
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
The teaching of Phonics at Leagrave follows the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ scheme to teach Systematic Synthetic Phonics, in order to give every child the best possible start to their reading and writing journey. The scheme teaches children a cumulative progression of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) that they immediately practise through oral blending, reading and spelling words and sentences, and, later on, reading fully decodable books. Children review and revise GPCs and words daily, weekly and across terms and years in order to move this knowledge into their long-term memory. The programme lends itself to a mastery approach to teaching phonics. This means that all
children in the class learn the same content at the same time and it applies the principle of all the children keeping up. Children in Reception, Key Stage 1 and 2 take part in short, focused phonics and spelling sessions within their classes (and small groups), working at an aspirational pace to move each child on to meet their full potential.
A wide range of exciting resources and reading books, matched to the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) progression of our chosen phonics programme, are used across the school to ensure that children are engaged and interested in their phonics learning. We teach phonics as one of the strategies a successful reader and writer uses to make sense of words and to create texts, ensuring that we offer the children plenty of meaningful opportunities to apply their learning, and so become keen, independent readers able to enjoy the rich literacy environment in our school and community.
This programme is initially introduced to our Nursery children building their awareness of sound through activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending. These activities include:
o sharing high-quality stories and poems
o learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
o activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
o attention to high-quality language.
This lays the foundations for the phonics work of linking letters and sounds in Phase 2.
Children in Reception are introduced to grapheme and phoneme correspondence(GPC) which enables them to link written letters with sounds. They are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
| Autumn 1 Phase 2 graphemes | New Tricky Words |
| s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f l | is I the |
| Autumn 2 Phase 2 graphemes | New Tricky Words |
ff ll ss j v w x y z zz qu ch sh th ng nk
|
put* pull* full* as and has his her go no to into she push* he of we me be |
| Spring 1 Phase 3 graphemes | New Tricky Words |
ai ee igh oa oo oo ar or ur ow oi ear air er
|
was you they my by all are sure pure |
| Spring 2 Phase 3 graphemes | No New Tricky Words |
Review Phase 3
| Review all taught so far |
| Summer 1 Phase 4 | New Tricky Words |
Short vowels with adjacent consonants
| said so have like some come love do were here little says there when what one out today |
| Summer 2 Phase 4 graphemes | No New Tricky Words |
Phase 3 long vowel graphemes with adjacent consonants
| Review all taught so far |
During the first half of the Autumn term, children in Year 1 review Phases 3 and 4 to consolidate the previous learning. Then they are taught alternative spelling choices for known phonemes to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.
| Autumn 1 | Review tricky words Phases 2-4 |
| Review Phase 3 and 4 Phase 5 /ai/ ay play /ow/ ou cloud /oi/ oy toy /ea/ ea each | Phases 2–4: the put* pull* full* push* to into I no go of he she we me be was you they all are my by sure pure said have like so do some come love were there little one when out what says here today |
| Autumn 2 Phase 5 graphemes | New tricky words |
| /ur/ ir bird /igh/ ie pie /oo/ /uoo/ ue blue rescue /you/ u unicorn /oa/ o go /igh/ i tiger /ai/ a paper /ee/ e he /ai/ a-e shake /igh/ i-e time /oa/ o-e home /oo/ /uoo/ u-e rude cute /ee/ e-e these /oo/ /uoo/ ew chew new /ee/ ie shield /or/ aw claw | their people oh your Mr Mrs Ms ask* could would should our house mouse water want |
| Spring 1 Phase 5 graphemes | New tricky words |
| /ee/ y funny /e/ ea head /w/ wh wheel /oa/ oe ou toe shoulder /igh/ y fly /oa/ ow snow /j/ g giant /f/ ph phone /l/ le al apple metal /s/ c ice /v/ ve give /u/ o-e o ou some mother young /z/ se cheese /s/ se c mouse fence /ee/ ey donkey /oo/ ui ou fruit soup | any many again who whole where two school call different thought through friend work |
| Spring 2 Phase 5 graphemes | New tricky words |
| /ur/ or word /oo/ ou owl awful could /air/ are share /or/ au our oor al author dinosaur floor walk /ch/ tch ture match adventure /ar/ a al half* father* /or/ a water schwa in longer words: different /o/ a want /air/ ear ere bear there /ur/ ear learn /r/ wr wrist /s/ st sc whistle science /c/ ch school /sh/ ch chef /z/ ze freeze schwa at the end of words: actor | once laugh because eye |
| Summer 2 Phase 5 graphemes | New tricky words |
| /ai/ eigh aigh ey ea eight straight grey break /n/ kn gn knee gnaw /m/ mb thumb /ear/ ere eer here deer /zh/ su si treasure vision /j/ dge bridge /i/ y crystal /j/ ge large /sh/ ti si ci p otion mission mansion delicious /or/ augh our oar ore daughter pour oar more | busy beautiful pretty hour move improve parents shoe |
During the Autumn term in Year 2, children consolidate their segmenting and blending skills to become fluent readers and spellers. The No-Nonsense spelling scheme is then introduced to help children learn the spelling rules, such as adding suffixes to words.
In KS2, some pupils undertake a Rapid catch-up intervention programme if they experience any difficulties with reading and spelling and are not able to keep up with their peers.