Phonics at Oughtibridge Primary School
Phonics is taught throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 following the Letters and Sounds phases. Children are taught phonics daily, in differentiated groups, by class teachers and teaching assistants. Lessons are fun and interactive, using a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities and resources. Phase 1 Phase 1 is not discreetly taught in lessons but continues alongside all the phonics work we do. The focus of this phase is for children to develop their vocabulary, become attentive listeners and confident speakers. Children have regular opportunities to listen carefully and talk extensively about what they see, hear and do. There are 7 aspects to Phase 1 1) General sound discrimination environmental sounds. 2) General sound discrimination instrumental sounds. 3) General sound discrimination body percussion. 4) Rhythm and rhyme. 5) Alliteration. 6) Voice sounds. 7) Oral blending and segmenting. Phase 2 In this phase children learn that spoken words are made up of different sounds (phonemes) and these sounds can be linked to written letters (graphemes). Phonemes can be made up of more than one letter. E.g. b as in bat oa as in goat igh as in light In Phase 2 the children will learn the following letters and sounds: s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff ll ss
They learn to apply the skills of blending for reading, and segmenting for spelling with these sounds. Blending: to read, the children are taught to say the sounds of the letters in the word and then put them together. Segmenting: To spell, the children are taught to say the word, split the word in to sounds and then write the letter(s) for each sound. Phase 3 In this phase children will be taught another 25 graphemes, many of which comprise of 2 letters (digraph). sh ch th ng ai ee oa ar oo or ur ow oi er Some have 3 letters (trigraph). igh ear air ure Tricky words are also introduced in this phase. These are words that cannot be decoded, and so have to be learned as sight words E.g. no she the was me be you her they all Phase 4 By the time children reach this phase they will be able to represent each of the 44 phonemes by a grapheme. Phase 4 aims to consolidate the learning from phases 2 and 3, and introduce 2 syllable words.
Phase 5 During Phase 5 children will broaden their knowledge and learn many alternative pronunciations of graphemes, and alternative spellings of phonemes. Alternative pronunciations for graphemes Words that contain the same letter but it is pronounced in a different way. E.g. a as in hat and acorn, e as in he and bed, i as in mind and tin etc. Alternative spellings of phonemes these are often thought of as sound families E.g. ai ay, ey, a Phase 6 In this phase children will learn the difference between past and present tense and the associated spelling rules. They will learn the rules for adding suffixes (- ly, -ing, -ed, -er, -ment, -ness, -en, -ful), and investigate words that are difficult to spell (e.g. beautiful ). The links between the work children do in their Literacy, Handwriting, and Phonics lessons will become stronger as children are encouraged to proofread their work, use dictionaries to check spellings, and begin to write in a joined up style. Assessment Towards the end of Year 1 children are tested on their phonics knowledge through the statutory Phonics Screening assessment. This requires children to read 40 words from phases 2 to 5. Some are real words and some are made up words. Children are tested on a one-to-one basis by their class teacher. Any children who don t achieve the pass mark of 32/40 have to do the test again in Year 2. Phonics in Key Stage 2 Children in KS2 who need additional support with phonics work with Teaching Assistants in both Early Risers and lesson times to reinforce and consolidate their understanding of phonics and improve on their reading and spelling. KS2 Teachers follow the Support for Spelling scheme.