Phonics
Children are fully immersed in daily phonics from Nursery through to Year 2 and beyond. They develop their listening and attention skills as well as following an effective, daily synthetic phonics scheme called First Class Phonics.
This scheme promotes a multi-sensory approach to teaching and learning and provides opportunities for children to independently practice and apply their phonic knowledge to read and spell.
First Class Phonics has a structured progression for teaching graphemes which slows down the pace of teaching but increases the pace of the learning. With First Class Phonics, there is time to teach and practise, but there is also time to revisit and embed.
With First Class Phonics there is a systematic progression for teaching word structures which matches up with the demands of all of the popular, recently published reading schemes. It also provides a systematic progression for teaching children to read an increasingly varied range of sentence structures, questions, exclamations and speech which again matches up with expectations in the most widely-used phonically decodable reading schemes. In turn, this enables children to successfully apply newly acquired phonic knowledge and decoding skills into reading phonically decodable books within their guided reading sessions and at home.
First Class Phonics provides a direct link between reading and writing through the weekly teaching sequence. This means that children always learn to read words before being asked to spell them! Our teachers are able to teach new vocabulary using the engaging picture prompts. These same picture cards are used as prompts in the spelling or writing lesson. The children practise orally segmenting first before being expected to spell or write. There is an emphasis on modelling spelling using manipulative resources as well as teaching letter formation.
Children are systematically assessed and re-grouped according to their needs and emerging abilities so that they always receive well-targeted teaching. Phonic sessions are always revisited and built upon to ensure over time, children know more, remember more and therefore, achieve more.
Phonics Screening Check
Children in Year One in the summer term will take the statutory Phonics Screening Check where children will be expected to read 40 simple, de-codable words including nonsense words. This is a progress check to identify those children not at expected level in their reading. Children will be rechecked in Year Two if they do not reach the expected level.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR AUTUMN 2021 – The children currently in Year Two will be taking their Phonics Screening Check in the second half of the autumn term due to the cancellation of the check when they were in Year One. Any resits will take place towards the end of Year Two. The children currently in Year One will take the check as normal in the summer term 2022.
In Year Three and Four our children continue to learn the wider phonic code using the Scode, Sounds and their Codes programme. Scode, Sounds and their Codes covers all aspects of the National Curriculum, through a highly structured scheme, that builds directly on learning in Key Stage One.
Children study the history and origins of the English language and learn why words are spelt the way they are. Providing them with the knowledge on which to build their spelling skill. Studying the fascinating etymology of words not only engages our children, but introduces them to complex and varied vocabulary.
Each child has their own individual Scode workbook that accompanies them on their spelling journey. A resource children can take pride in completing. The tasks in the workbooks include a variety of games, knowledge organisers and activities that have been designed to make spelling fun.
In Scode lessons children will continuously practise spelling. Through daily recaps and embracing the scientific research on memory, the Scode programme ensure that spelling knowledge is generative or “sticky”.
More information for parents on all aspects of Scode can be found at: