Phonics

Intent

At Cheddar First School and Preschool, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Unlocking Letters and Sounds, which is a synthetic and systematic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Phonics and follow the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression, which ensure children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. As a result, all of our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Cheddar First School and Preschool, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Implementation

Foundations for phonics in Nursery

We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’.

These include:

  • sharing high-quality stories and poems
  • learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
  • activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
  • attention to high-quality language.

We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we use digital lessons on our interactive whiteboard to introduce the letters and common exception words (CEW) each day. This the progresses as we revise work covered to date and introduce reading sentences. Each lesson begins with the alphabet song sung in different tunes. Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of Autumn term.

We follow the Unlocking Letters and Sounds expectations of progress:

  • Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
  • Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.
  • Children in Year 2 review Phase 5 to recap spellings with fluency and accuracy and establish mastery in reading GPCs.

Impact

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

Assessment for Learning

is used:

  • daily within class to identify children needing keep-up support using Unlocking Letters and Sounds ‘Ambitions Expectations’ programme.
  • weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

Summative Assessment

is used:

  • every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the keep-up support that they need.
  • by SLT and scrutinised through an assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

Statutory Assessment

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.

Ongoing Assessment For Catch-up

Children in Year 2 to 4 are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Unlocking Letters and Sounds summative assessments.