Phonics Scheme
Letters and Sounds
Children in Early Years, Year 1 and 2 follow the Letters and Sounds Phonics Scheme. The school has invested in brand new resources in 2016 so that all children in KS1 can benefit.
What is Letters and Sounds?
Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.
There are six overlapping phases. The table below is a summary based on the Letters and Sounds guidance for Practitioners and Teachers. ( see table on the right )
How often will my child receive Phonic sessions?
Each child on Reception, Year 1 and 2 will have 30 mins a day dedicated to Phonic sessions. These are delivered by staff who are trained to deliver Phonics. Children are in small groups so that they are able to make progress. It is expected that children will move throughout phases in the academic year depending on their progress.
In addition to dedicated Phonic sessions, staff in Early Years and Years 1&2 will include phonics throughout the day.
What have been your Phonic Results in the Past?
In 2016 87% of children in year 1 achieved a pass of 32/40 or above mark. ( 83% national)
in 2017 83% of children in Year 1 achieved a pass of 32/40 or above mark.
This does not mean children will stop phonic sessions. Children will continue to have phonic sessions in year 2 in order to work throughout the Letters and Sounds phases and consolidate their reading.
Letters and Sounds Phase Groups.
P hase |
Phonic Knowledge and Skills |
|
Phase One(Nursery/Reception) |
Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting. |
|
Phase Two(Reception) up to 6 weeks |
Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions. |
| Phase Three(Reception) up to 12 weeks | The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language. |
|
Phase Four(Reception) 4 to 6 weeks |
No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump. |
| Phase Five(Throughout Year 1) | Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know. |
| Phase Six(Throughout Year 2 and beyond) | Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc. |
