phonics
TEACH NURTURE CELEBRATE
Our Curriculum aims and design have been developed in line with the needs of St James CE Primary School community, promoting the Christian Values we hold dear. Our curriculum is ambitious and well-planned to ensure all pupils gain ample knowledge and skills to succeed in their next stage of education and life after primary school.
The aims are also based heavily on our school vision of Teach, Nurture and Celebrate in order that children should experience ‘Life in all its fullness’ (John 10:10). All stakeholders were involved in creating the vision and aims, including: pupils, parents, PTFA, and staff members at all levels.
SMSC is embedded throughout our curriculum design. The aspect of Spirituality is a particular focus for us.
The St James Curriculum was chosen and adapted to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to meet Key Stage requirements and allow for smooth transition to the next phase of education. We re-designed our curriculum to enable children to experience a more enquiry-based approach. This allows children to develop key skills and seek vital knowledge through exploring big questions and concepts.
Aims:
- Within our curriculum, we aim to inspire all pupils through engaging learning experiences
- We aim to nurture passionate, healthy and successful learners by providing a broad, balanced and enquiry-based curriculum
- Instil children with the values, knowledge and skills to enable them to achieve beyond expectations and experience success
- Provide a progressive curriculum where skills and knowledge are developed through quality ongoing assessment.
Intent
As a school we follow ‘Super Sonic Phonics Friends’, to support us with the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. This ensures a consistent approach across early years and Key Stage 1. Super Supersonic Phonic Friends is an enchanted adventure of phonics where along the way children will meet several friendly woodland characters who represent each literacy skill involved. Supported by the children's new 'Supersonic friends' and rhyming captions and phrases, this approach will ensure children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing.
Implementation
During the Reception year children are introduced to phonemes and their corresponding graphemes. We begin to look at single letter sounds and the representing spelling for this. Children then begin to read and write three letter words; matching the grapheme to the sound they can hear.
As they become confident and fluent readers and writers of CVC words children are then introduced to digraphs; where two letters make one sound. Throughout the whole of the reception year our phonic teaching relies on the firm foundations of orally blending and segmenting and is deep rooted in rhythm and rhyme. By the end of EYFS children should be fluent with all 44 sounds; including one way to represent them.
In Year 1 children develop their ability to hear and remember more than three sounds in a row and explore adjacent consonants to read CVCC and CCVC words such as ‘think, coast and blink’. They also become fluent at recognising and applying alternative sounds for the 44 graphemes they learnt in Reception and are introduced to alternative ways to make each of the digraphs they have previously learnt. Through the use of the characters 'Switch it Mitch' and 'Choose to Use Suze' they recognise spelling patterns and rules to identify which spelling they need to represent the sound. By the end of Year 1 children will have had access to over 100 spellings to make the 44 sounds.
Children are also introduced to 'Nonsense Nan' who will guide them through how to read alien and real words in preparation for the Year 1 Phonic Screening Check at the end of their time in Year 1. Children are also introduced to more tricky and high frequency words.
From Year 2, we continue to explore grapheme phoneme correspondence and learn spelling rules to support our reading and writing development. Supersonic Phonic Friends allows us access to a tailored programme of spelling rules for both children in Year 1 and Year 2.
All lessons are delivered using a consistent set of slides provided by the phonic scheme. Lessons last 30 minutes.
Reading books are matched the the phonic knowledge of each child. We use Bog Cat Phonics Books, which build on sounds that have previously been taught. They are read in a sequential order so that previous learning is constantly re-visited as new learning is introduced.
Impact
At St. James CE Primary School, we have a concise whole school shared definition of learning: ‘Learning is a change in long term memory.’ In order to identify the impact our curriculum is having on our pupils, teachers employ a range of assessment strategies both at the point of teaching and after.
Regular assessment of pupil needs and understanding plays a vital role here as does the provision of appropriate resources, the internet and our whiteboards offer a wealth of materials that can be matched to suit individual or group needs, enabling all pupils to develop their phonic knowledge and skills.
Reading suggestions...
Phonics
Here at St James, staff and pupils follow the very exciting and engaging phonics scheme 'Supersonic Phonic Friends'. Supersonic Phonic Friends is an enchanted adventure of phonics where along the way children will meet several friendly woodland characters who represent each literacy skill involved. Supported by the children's new 'Supersonic friends' and rhyming captions and phrases, this approach will ensure children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing. Meet the characters, explore the benefits and have a look at the links and videos below to find out more about our phonics scheme.
Super Sonic Phonic Friend Characters
Example lesson
Overview of Phase One - Phase Five
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Phase One (Nursery) |
This phase is split into seven aspects: Aspect 1: General Sound Discrimination – Environmental Sounds Aspect 2: General Sound Discrimination – Instrumental Sounds Aspect 3: General Sound Discrimination – Body Percussion Aspect 4: Rhythm and Rhyme Aspect 5: Alliteration Aspect 6: Voice Sounds Aspect 7: Oral Blending and Segmenting |
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Phase Two (Reception) |
The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. By the end of the phase many children should be able to read some VC and CVC words and to spell them either using magnetic letters or by writing the letters on paper or on whiteboards. During the phase they will be introduced to reading two-syllable words and simple captions. |
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Phase Three (Reception) |
The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme. Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. They will learn letter names during this phase, learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words. |
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Phase Four (Reception) |
No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words |
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Phase Five (Throughout Year 1) |
The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant. |
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| SSPF Progression.pdf | Download |
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| Phonics Policy 22-23.pdf | Download |
