Phonics 

Phonics

At St Wilfrid’s Catholic Primary School we aim to develop the full potential of all our pupils as confident, literate readers and writers. If children are to develop as competent readers and writers, it is vitally important that they have a secure understanding of the letter sounds and spelling system of the English language. Phonic skills need to be developed in a systematic way, based on a stage approach. At St Wilfrid’s phonics is taught in a highly structured programme of daily lessons across EYFS and KS1 following the Twinkl Phonics programme.  

Phonics Progression Map (Expectations for Foundation, Year 1 & Year 2)

The Phonics Programme 

In Reception and KS1, children learn to read using the Twinkl Phonics Programme. The Twinkl Phonics Programme offers a coherently planned sequence of lessons that supports the effective teaching of phonics within EYFS, KS1 and, where appropriate, KS2. 

Children have daily phonics teaching and are given further opportunities to practice and develop their reading and writing skills. The following conceptual knowledge is taught: 

Letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds. 

A sound may be represented or spelled by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters, e.g. dog , street, night, dough. 

The same sound may be spelled in more than one way (one sound-different spellings), e.g. rain, break, gate, stay. 

Many spellings can represent more than one sound (one spelling- different sounds), e.g. head, seat, break. 

The children develop the skills of blending (combining sounds together to build words), segmenting (breaking up a word into individual sounds) and manipulating sounds to read and spell words correctly.  

You can use the QR codes below to find out more 

Tracking & Assessment 

All pupils are assessed at the end of each level or sub-level (Twinkl Phonics Levels 5 and 6). During daily sessions of phonics there are also opportunities for staff to regularly assess children’s understanding.  Outside the discrete daily phonics sessions there are opportunities to observe the application of phonic skills, e.g. during guided / shared reading. 

Regular monitoring of the assessment outcomes allows teachers to ensure that all children are making expected progress, including children in the most vulnerable groups. This information is also used to identify children who are not making expected progress and therefore early intervention can be put in place. 

Year 1 Screening Check

Every Year 1 child in the Summer term will take a Phonics Screening Check. This is a phonics based check where children will be expected to read 40 simple, decodable words including nonsense words. This is a progress check to identify those children not at expected level in their reading. The results will be reported to parents as well as the local authority. Children will be rechecked in Year 2 if they do not reach the expected level. Any child working below the level of the screen check may be disapplied, with the acknowledgment of the parent/carer. The Year 1 phonics meeting gives parents information about how they can support their children at home with phonics. 

You can find out more about Phonics Screening and 'Alien' words by clicking here or using the following QR code-

Intervention 

Through careful monitoring and tracking teachers are able to identify children who are not making the expected progress and therefore need intervention to catch up. Depending on the needs of individuals, this may include additional individual or small group teaching before the lesson or after the main lesson; one to one work with a trained practitioner or extra support for a child or small group of children within a lesson. It is important that children who are struggling to learn to read not only need to catch up with their peers, but also to continue to make progress. 

Phonics in Key Stage 2 

If children in Key Stage 2 experience difficulty in reading and/or writing because they have missed or misunderstood a crucial phase of the systematic phonics teaching additional resources can be used to support them. These resources include, amongst other resources, the Twinkl Phonics Codebreakers and Beat Dyslexia. 

Home Learning Opportunities 

At EYFS and KS1 home learning is used to support phonics taught in class, through tasks such as: 

Reading of phonic books matched to the children’s phonic knowledge; 

The use of the Twinkl Phonics Parent Information Sheets; 

The use of Reading Eggs. 

To go to the Reading Eggs login page please click here or use the QR code-