Here at Christ Church C of E Primary School, we aim to create a love for reading, writing and spelling through a consistent approach to phonics teaching and learning. We aim for children to become enthusiastic and motivated about reading, by developing a confidence in phonics.
Our aim is to build reciprocity between phonics, reading and writing and for every child to leave Christ Church with the knowledge and skills of an outstanding reader, writer and speller.
At Christ Church, we follow a systematic synthetic programme called Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.
Following this progression, children will begin formal teaching of phonics at the start of their second week of FS2. We begin with phase 2, where all children will learn the phonemes for the corresponding grapheme. Initially, children begin with the single sounds before progressing onto learning digraphs and trigraphs. When learning the phonemes, children will learn mantras that work alongside. These allow children to remember them and apply them in their reading and writing.
As children develop their knowledge and understanding of phonics, alternative pronunciations and spellings will be introduced in Year 1 allowing children to ‘grow the code’. They then move onto spelling rules in Year 2.
Phonics is delivered daily as an explicit lesson in EYFS and KS1. Phonics is taught as a whole class approach to ensure that quality first teaching is accessible to all children. Children are then assessed half-termly on their knowledge which is then used as the basis for keep up interventions to help narrow the gap between the cohort. Children are taught tricky words linking to the phonics progression and understanding as to why these are tricky is also taught. This allows our children to have a deeper understanding of these and apply this in their reading and writing.
Children take part in three reading sessions a week with a trained adult. During these sessions they read a phonetically decodable book based at the child's individual level. Children read this book focusing on decoding, prosody and comprehension. They will then take home two reading books: their phonically decodable reading practice book which has been the focus of their reading sessions, and a TeamRead book to share with their team at home.
The impact of the teaching of phonics is assessed in two ways over the course of the year – assessment of learning and half termly assessment. Staff continuously assess children throughout the week to support any keep up interventions that may need to take place. Half-termly assessments allow us to monitor progress and ensure all children are reading a book linked to their current phonics knowledge.
Statutory assessment of the Phonics Screening will also take place in Year 1 to assess phonics knowledge before progressing into Year 2. Any children who did not pass will retake the screening in Year 2.
All assessments are judged termly through a validation process in which data, books, teaching and pupil voice is reviewed by the subject leader along with a member of the SLT. Discussions are also held with the pupils and the class teachers to ensure consistency and accuracy of assessment.
All SEND, EAL and pupil premium pupils are also tracked as part of pupil progress monitoring. Within the EYFS, key milestones have been identified across the year and these are used to assess the children’s progress towards meeting the ELG for writing; this enables a more -timely identification of any gaps that may need addressing.