Teaching Phonics

The Purpose of Phonics in the curriculum:

At Strive 4 Academy Trust, we believe that it is essential that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One. We believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a rich language approach that promotes a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture. The Phonics curriculum ensures that children learn the phonemes and graphemes required for fluent, accurate decoding in a systematic, progressive manner so that they build a strong foundation upon which to begin their journey of becoming a reader. A structured, consistent approach to Phonics lessons ensures that teaching is systematic and progressive through EYFS and into KS1. Through their Phonics lessons, children acquire the sound phonetic knowledge, understanding and skills to enable them to decode words confidently and engage with higher order reading and writing skills.

Aims and Outcomes:

To teach children aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme to aid reading, writing and spelling development.

· To encourage the use of segmenting and blending so that decoding skills provide a sound foundation for reading, writing and spelling.

· To ensure the teaching of phonics is lively, interactive and investigative.

· To enable children to use phonic awareness across the curriculum.

· To ensure that children know the 44 phonemes within the English language.

· To teach children to recognise the graphemes within words and associate them with the appropriate phoneme when reading.

· To provide children with strategies to identify and decode ‘tricky words’.

Teaching and Learning:

Phonics (reading and spelling)

At our school we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At our school we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Comprehension

 At our school we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

To find out more about Little Wandle and how you can support at home, please visit:

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/