Phonics and Early Reading

At St Mark’s, we use the DfE validated systematic synthetic phonics programme, Essential Letters and Sounds to deliver phonics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1. We also use decodable phonics books from Essential Letters and Sounds, which is our reading scheme.

Intent

We use a systematic approach to the teaching of synthetic phonics to enable children to develop secure reading and spelling skills. It is proven that high quality phonics teaching is the best way to teach children to read, ‘the EEF considers phonics to be one of the most secure and best-evidenced areas of pedagogy, recommending all schools use a systematic approach to teaching it. There is convincing evidence of the value of systematic synthetic phonics (SSP)’ (The Reading Framework –Teaching the foundations of literacy January 2022). A strong emphasis on high quality teaching of phonics can substantially reduce the number of children at risk of falling below age-related expectations for reading.

At St Mark’s we aim to:

• Deliver high-quality phonics teaching, which secures the crucial skills of word recognition that, once mastered, enables children to read fluently and automatically enable them to concentrate on the meaning of the text

• To support pupils with targeted, differentiated phonics and spelling work where needed, in addition to the whole class teaching, so that all children are given sufficient support to progress and experience challenge at a level at which they can succeed

Implementation

SSP Programme

Phonics is taught daily for a minimum of 20 minutes in Early Years and Key Stage 1, following the Essential Letters and Sounds SPP programme. Essential Letters and Sounds teaches new graphemes and related phonemes, or alternative spellings to previously taught phonemes, within the whole class teaching. This fast pace, backed up by daily revision of past teaching, has proved the most effective and successful method of phonic training. This means that the basic 40+ phonemes and then the alternative spellings of these phonemes , are acquired quickly, and early reading skills develop rapidly.  This enables children to apply the taught strategies and enjoy contextualised reading early on. The order of grapheme introduction ensures that children start reading and spelling a wide range of words at the earliest possible stage.

Planning, the Teaching Sequence and Expectations

Essential Letters and Sounds is taught in Reception to Year 2, daily for up to 40 minutes. Children are taught in whole class/group sessions to ensure children are taught age-related phonics. Additional phonics intervention is given for children who need targeted support of earlier phonics with a member of staff trained in delivering high quality phonics, using phonics bugs games and lessons resources.

Phases 2 to 4 are delivered throughout Reception and Phases 5 and 6 in Key Stage 1. Children are taught phonics altogether with their year group. Those who need additional support or extension will receive this from the teacher or LSA during the practice and application part of the phonics session. Children requiring additional phonics support will receive this in addition to their daily session.

Phonics planning is provided within our SPP programme. The Essential Letters and Sounds planning follows the same teaching sequence for each lesson delivered through each and every phase. Teachers and LSAs enhance planning to ensure that there is a multi-sensory approach to the delivery of the teaching sessions; however, follow the teaching sequence to ensure consistency across the key stages in the delivery of phonics.

Reception – We aim for all children to have completed Phase 4 by the end of Reception.

Year One – We aim for all children to have completed Phase 5 by the end of Year One.

Year Two – We aim for all children to be working securely within Phase 6 by the end of Year Two.

Key Stage Two (Year 3 – Year 6) – Further phonics interventions are planned for children who are not yet secure in Phase 6 phonics. These sessions will be tailored to meet the needs of individual children and delivered by a trained member of staff, using phonics bugs games and lesson resources.

Harder to read words

Our school’s agreed approach to the teaching of common exception words is that children are encouraged to use their knowledge of synthetic phonics, as much as possible, to work out how to read unknown words aloud. The parts of a word that are 'irregular/tricky', and do not directly correspond to known grapheme/phoneme correspondence, are identified and discussed as a teaching point. Within this sequence, we have identified where we expect ‘irregular/tricky’ words and decodable high frequency words to be taught. This includes the decodable high frequency (common) word list from Essential Letters and Sounds (which makes up the 100 high frequency word list), alongside the National Curriculum Common Exception Words.

Resources

Children have access to whiteboards, pens, magnetic letters, flashcards and GPC mats.  All classrooms must display friezes and/or grapheme wall posters that match the GPCs and progression of Essential Letters and Sounds. 

Letter formation

Essential Letters and Sounds teaches letter formation (for both lower case and capital letters) at the point of introduction of every grapheme. Talking-through elements of such teaching also supports the children’s cognitive processes.

See our letter formation below, this is used consistently throughout the school.

Assessment and Tracking:

Teachers assess children’s understanding of phonics using the assessment tools and schedule provided by Essential Letters and Sounds. The data is analysed termly to provide an overview of children’s phonics stages in classes, key stages and across the school. Progress is tracked and children/groups of children that need additional intervention are identified. At the end of the academic year, the class teacher passes on the end of year phonics data to the next class teacher stating where the children are within the Essential Letters and Sounds programme. This data will provide teachers with possible next steps for children to build on their personal phonics development.

Home Reading

 All of our home readers are decodable and have been organised to match the Essential Letters and Sounds progression. There are a variety of books to match each unit of the teaching programme. Following assessments, (using a variety of Essential Letters and Sounds, Reception Baseline screening, Salford, PMR benchmarking and PIRA from summer term in Year 1), children are matched to the correct unit of home reader. Thus, providing an opportunity for the children to practise and consolidate their learning at each stage. Prior to this,  there is a strong focus on communication and language where pre-readers (wordless books) will be sent home with guidance for parents.

Essential Letters and Sounds also provides a library of ebooks that can be allocated to individual children post phonics teaching session. Essential Letters and Sounds readers are designed to support children in practising and consolidating the knowledge they acquire during the whole-class teaching sessions. Essential Letters and Sounds online reading library helps children improve core reading skills, at school or home. Children will receive one home reader from the school reading library each week.  They are encouraged to read their reading books three times to aid with reading fluency. This ensures that children are able to practice and apply sounds they have previously learnt, and encourages a range of reading, whilst promoting enjoyment of reading.

Meeting the need of the lowest 20% of children

A phonics baseline assessment is completed during the first six weeks of the school year. This aids the identification of those children who require additional support. In addition to this, please see ‘assessment’ for more information on how and when children working within the lowest 20% are identified. Children working within the lowest 20% will be supported by the following provision:

• Children to receive direct phonics teaching in smaller group tailored to their specific needs
• Children to receive daily reading and flashcards on sounds they are focusing on

Progress and impact of intervention and support will be reviewed half termly.

Comprehension

Reception

In Reception, comprehension is taught through adult led session as part of our projects. Comprehension is also practiced throughout continuous provision in conversations with adults and during story time.

Key Stage 1

The teaching of comprehension in Key Stage 1 is taught through weekly ‘reading skills’ sessions. They focus on the 5 areas of reading: comprehension, inference, themes and conventions, language for effect and word reading. The skills are taught individually and practiced, applied and developed throughout the school year through these discrete reading skills sessions, and our wider integrated curriculum. These skills are recorded in individual reading journals. In addition, any reading learning objectives practised and applied within the integrated curriculum are highlighted as a reading skill clearly on the learning objective in project books.

Key Stage 2

The teaching of comprehension in Key Stage 1 is taught through daily  ‘reading skills’ sessions of 30 minutes. Each session focuses on one of the 5 areas of reading: comprehension, inference, themes and conventions, language for effect and word reading. Classes focus on one main text for 2-3 sessions a week followed by exploring two standalone texts (poetry, newspaper, non fiction, short story etc) to ensure that children are exposed to a wide range of genres. 

How can I help my child with reading using phonics? 

The importance of Pure Sounds and how to help your child

 Lve Reading

Writing

At St Marks we believe in providing the children with a real purpose and context within which to learn to be a confident writer.

We strive to achieve this through our unique integrated curriculum, please see our topic rationales for the English covered within each topic: