Phonics

INTENT

At Welland Primary Academy we value reading and writing as a key life skill and are dedicated to providing the children with the phonic knowledge, application and skills to enable everyone to have lifelong quality skills to access and enjoy reading. Phonics has a very high priority across EYFS, Key stage 1 and beyond as needed by our children. The systematic teaching of phonics through daily high quality teaching, focuses on phonic acquisition, segmenting and blending, enabling our children to become confident and skilful in their phonics in both reading and writing. These skills are vital to becoming an engaged, focused and confident learner which, we at Welland Academy are passionate about for all our children.

 

IMPLEMENTATION

We follow the order of Letters and Sounds when teaching phonics to our children and use RWInc phrases to support this. Children from EYFS to Year 2 are taught phonics daily and if needed, children in Year 3 continue their phonic learning if their level of phonics has not met the Year 1 phonic screening check. On top of daily phonics teaching, children also access intervention support to reinforce and secure their phonic skills and knowledge.

Phonics is planned in a four part lesson format – review/revise, teach, practise and apply. This keeps the teaching across all classes consistent and focused on the teaching and application of skills. Lessons are fast paced, physical and focused which we have found has a positive impact on our children’s learning of phonics. Every lesson enables the children to revise what they have learnt so far, learn new phonemes/digraphs/trigraphs, practise their skills and apply them to reading and writing. Phonic knowledge and skills are assessed half termly using Phonic Tracker, but also daily, through the lessons themselves, allowing teachers the opportunity to keep the phonic groupings fluid and flexible and supporting children where they need it.

Phonics is taught through phases –

            

 

             

 

                      

Children have reading books that match their phonic level, this means their reading book will support the level of phonic acquisition the child has and enable them to practise and apply the phonemes they have been taught. As their skills develop so will the books they access. In EYFS children will bring a reading book home to share with parents when they are ready and secure in the first set of phonemes. This allows the children to build up reading confidence at their speed and level.

 

IMPACT

Through the high quality, systematic teaching of phonics, we aim for our children to become confident and fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. We want children to enjoy and have confidence in their phonics learning and transfer these skills to support their reading for pleasure and writing. In Year 1, all children will participate in the phonics screening check (see attachment before for information for parents) and  the majority of our children will pass it. This number will increase in Year 2 for any children who re-take it. Our children will have solid phonic skills which they are able to use independently when reading and writing in all areas of the curriculum, taking them into their future learning in life.