Stirchley Primary School

  1. Curriculum
  2. Subjects
  3. Phonics

Phonics at Stirchley Primary School

What is Phonics?

Phonics is the knowledge of how the alphabetic sounds work and how these sounds are combined to correspond to the spoken word. In essence, phonics gives children the skills they need in order to read.

At Stirchley Primary School, we enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills as soon as they start their school journey, with the expectation that they will become fluent readers, having secured word building and recognition skills, by the end of Key Stage One. At the end of Year One all children will complete the statutory Phonics Screening Test. These tests are used to determine if children are working at national standards for reading and the results of these tests will be shared in your child’s annual report.

 

Our Approach

We deliver daily phonics lessons in Early Years and Key Stage One using the high quality DfE accredited phonics programme, Bug Club Phonics.  Bug Club Phonics is a Systematic Synthetic Programme (SSP) and works in conjunction with our phonics reading book scheme. It is a comprehensive phonics teaching programme centred around an accessible and inclusive teaching approach. The authors of Bug Club Phonics were also the authors of the seven-year Clackmannanshire study that proved systematic synthetic phonics to be the most effective way to teach children to read.

 

Reading Books

When children are first learning to read, we select home reading books that closely match phonics teaching in school. The children are only given books that they have been taught the skills to decode. These decodable reading books are also published by Pearson and are designed to work alongside the Bug Club Phonics programme.  Once children are using and applying the skills taught in Phase 5, they will then move away from decodable phonics books and on to ‘Independent Readers'. 

Our Aims:

  • To enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills in EYFS, with the expectation that they will become fluent readers, having secured word building and recognition skills, by the end of Key Stage One.
  • To ensure that the children apply phonic knowledge as their first approach to reading and spelling, even though all words do not conform to regular phonic patterns, with the ultimate goal being ‘automatic and effortless reading and writing’.
  • To ensure that the children are taught high frequency words that do not conform to regular phonic patterns. (Tricky words or Common Exception words)
  • To ensure that children have opportunities to read texts and words that are within their phonic capabilities as early as possible, even though all words may not be entirely decodable by the children unaided.
  • To encourage the children to attempt to spell words for themselves, within the range of their phonic knowledge, by building an individual repertoire and the confidence and strategies to attempt the unfamiliar.
  • To help the children to apply the skill of blending phonemes in order to read words.
  • To help the children to segment words into their constituent phonemes in order to spell words.
  • To learn the blending and segmenting words are reversible processes.
  • To teach the children that phonemes should be blended from left to right through the complete word, in order for it to be read.
  • To teach the children that phonemes should be blended from left to right through the complete word, in order for it to be read.

Mrs Richards

Phonics Lead

Useful Documents and Support:

 

Stirchley Primary School Phonics Progression Document:

Please click on the link below to see how and when phonics skills are taught throughout EYFS and KS1.

Phonics Glossary of terms:

We encourage the use of the correct phonics terminology during our phonics lessons. Please click on the document below to find out more.

Name
 Phonics Terminology.pdfDownload
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 Useful Websites

 Please click on the pictures below to access and explore free phonics games and resources.