Phonics

OUR AIMS

We want our pupils to:

• Respect themselves, respect others, respect all property, and respect their community and the World around them.
• Have a positive attitude that encourages self-belief and confidence
• Achieve high standards in all areas of the curriculum.
• Respond to challenges and seize new experiences whole–heartedly.
• Take an active lead in their own learning and development throughout their life.
• Develop the spirit of enquiry leading to life-long learning.

OUR VISION FOR THIS SUBJECT

At Cheswick Green Primary School, we believe that every child should have the chance to become a confident and fluent reader. It is vitally important that our children have a secure understanding of the Letters and Sounds system of English. Phonics skills need to be developed in a systematic, staged approached in order to help all children achieve their potential.

PHONICS CURRICULUM INTENT  

At Cheswick Green, we value reading as a key life skill, and are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers. We follow the Twinkl synthetic phonics scheme, and our provision is designed to ensure that all of our children will learn to read well and in turn, write well. Phonics is the roots for reading that help our children grow into confident readers, with reading for pleasure at the very heart of our curriculum. We believe that all children should progress through our systematic, synthetic approach with fluency and confidence, and thus place high importance on high quality teaching and resources. Phonics and reading are essential tools to access the whole curriculum, to engage and make sense of knowledge and to explore, question and respond to the world. A strong phonics basis enables us to ensure our children flourish as readers and therefore develop socially, emotionally, intellectually and culturally. We offer a structure and sequence of lessons to help teachers ensure they have covered the skills required to meet the aims of the National Curriculum Programme of Study for English.

The Twinkl Phonics Programme offers a coherently planned sequence of lessons that supports the effective teaching of phonics within EYFS, KS1 and, where appropriate, KS2. Level 1 Twinkl Phonics provides us with themed teaching packs to deliver each of the DfE’s Phase 1 phonics aspects. Throughout Level 1, young learners develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to discriminate between and use auditory, environmental and instrumental sounds. Level 1 is taught in the EYFS and runs throughout the teaching of phonics Levels 2-6. In reception, children work within Levels 2-4. Here learners are introduced to phonemes/sounds and graphemes/letters systematically. They also learn to develop and apply blending and segmenting skills for reading and writing. Within KS1, children work within Levels 5 and 6. The coherently planned sequence of lessons within Level 5 allows opportunities for children to apply their phonics knowledge and skills as the prime approach to reading and spelling. It focuses on phonetically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words and the alternative ways of pronouncing and representing the long vowel phonemes. Furthermore, children will develop their ability to attempt to read and spell increasingly complex words. By Level 6, children explore spelling patterns and grammar while also developing a breadth of knowledge, skills and understanding in the recognition and spelling of common exception words. The Twinkl Phonics Programme intends to not only provide children with opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding essential for reading and writing, but also, to develop each child’s confidence, resilience and engagement in phonics lessons and a love for reading and writing.

In order for us to deliver a high-quality synthetic phonics programme we ensure:

• - Up-to-date training for all staff
• - Correct pronunciation by children and adults
• - A clear understanding of age-related expectations
• - Systematically working through the ambitious programme to ensure continuity and cohesion across all Key Stages. Intervention to enable catch up where it is needed in KS2.
• - A multi-sensory approach (VAK) Games and activities using a range of materials.
• - Fully interactive sessions offering high challenge
• - Children are taught to blend phonemes. in order, from left to right, all through the word
• - Children are taught to segment to spell.
• - Children use phonics and word-building to lean to read and spell.
• - Children learn to read and spell the common exception words.
• - Revisit, practise, apply and retrieve: reading words individually and in sentences and texts.
• - Revisit, practise, apply and retrieve: spelling words individually and in sentences.

PHONICS CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION

 The Twinkl Phonics Progression Map sets clear expectations for pupil’s progress within the Twinkl Phonics Programme. The tracking document attached allows us to track pupil’s progress. It provides opportunities for data analysis and encourages discussions around pupil progress, group progress, future learning and misconceptions, enabling us to respond and adapt teaching within the programme to provide additional support and challenge to pupils. The dynamic and engaging materials delivered in the daily planning packs within Levels 2-6 ensure a clearly defined structure to the teaching of phonics. The direct teacher-led lessons enable all learners to develop and apply new skills while also providing opportunities to further apply these skills within fun and engaging activities and through continuous provision. The teaching PowerPoints, stories, games, additional texts and toolkits are meticulously planned to allow children to apply and practise phonics skills. They also offer opportunities to challenge learners and provide support to teachers and parents. Teacher guides for each stage are provided to allow teachers and adults working with children to feel confident in their own subject knowledge, knowing they are fulfilling the national phonics criteria and enabling each child to achieve their potential. 

In KS2, we use the Codebreakers intervention to provide targeted support to children who have not yet mastered their phonics and for whom it is a barrier to their reading and writing.

PHONICS CURRICULUM IMPACT

The impact of using the Twinkl Phonics Programme as the basis of our phonics teaching within EYFS and KS1, will be for children to develop their phonics skills and knowledge through a systematic, synthetic approach, while covering the statutory requirements outlined in the 2014 National Curriculum. The programme prepares children for the statutory year 1 phonics screening check and can complement the DfE’s Letters and Sounds document or be used as a stand-alone programme. Following the programme gives us a consistent approach to phonics, which is clear to teaching staff and learners.

Staff use the assessment material within the programme to carefully assess, track and monitor pupil progress. Timely and swift intervention is put in place for those children who have not secured the sounds taught.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN PHONICS

Where children have a physical disability or have SEND, we aim to provide resources and learning experiences that will support their learning in phonics We do this by setting suitable learning challenges, responding to each child’s different needs and providing learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress.

Activities should be carefully planned by the class teacher and be differentiated where appropriate for children with SEN and equally the more able and Gifted and Talented children. All resources/materials have been reviewed with equal opportunities in mind, e.g. race, gender, ethnicity. Learning experiences in music will be available to every child, regardless of race, gender, class or ability.

INCLUSION

Inclusion is about every child having educational needs, that every child is special and the School is meeting these diverse needs in order to ensure the active participation and progress of all children in their learning.  

Inclusive practice in Phonics should enable all children to achieve their best possible standard; whatever their ability, and irrespective of gender, ethnic, social or cultural background, home language or any other aspect that could affect their participation in, or progress in their learning.

We recognise that in all classes, children have a wide range of reading ability, and so we seek to provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways:

• setting children by ability so that learning is targeted to the needs of the child.
• using classroom assistants to support the work of individuals or groups of children.