Teaching of Phonics and Reading
At East Boldon Infant School we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One and believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching coupled with a whole language approach that promotes a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.
The Rose Report (2006) emphasised high quality phonics as an important part of the word decoding skills required by children to develop higher level whole language and comprehension skills. This approach is in alignment with our belief that we first ‘learn to read’ and then ‘read to learn’. This policy is aimed at reinforcing a consistent, high quality approach to the teaching of phonics across the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1.
What is phonics?
This is the knowledge of how the alphabetic sounds work and how these sounds are combined to correspond to the spoken word. Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully.
- Phonemes are the sounds which are made by blending letters to correspond to the spoken word. Children will be taught how to recognise the phonemes that each individual letter makes. Children will also be taught to identify the phonemes that different combinations of letters make eg. ai, oi
- Children are taught to blend these phonemes together from left to right to make a word.
- Graphemes are the written equivalent of phonemes.
Children can then use this knowledge to ‘de-code’ new words that they hear or see. This is the first important step in learning to read.
Why Phonics?
Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. It is particularly helpful for children aged 4 to 7.
Almost all children who receive good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently reading for enjoyment and pleasure. How do we teach phonics?
We conduct daily phonics teaching sessions in Early Years and KS1 based on the model of review, teach, practise and apply. We teach phonics using the McKie Mastery Power Phonics programme.
The Power Phonics programme from McKie Mastery teaches children how the alphabet works for reading and spelling. It is a systematic synthetic approach to phonics teaching and word recognition. Power phonics is not an abstract oral/content/activity-led system but a consistent quality-first teaching method. Vast and fast improvement is achieved using this method in order to teach all children to use phonics to read and write.
Power Phonics is taught daily as a discrete 20 minute sessions. Each daily phonics lesson follows the structure of review, teach, practise and apply. In Reception initial phonemes are introduced before moving on to long phonemes and phoneme families. Children work through the phonic programme becoming fluent, independent, free readers. The books children read are carefully matched to their phonic knowledge and provide opportunities for children to apply their phonic knowledge during power reading sessions (paired reading). Power Phonics flash cards and table top resources are used to support the teaching of phonemes and to support with the formation of graphemes. Children who are just beginning to learn the letter/sound correspondences are learning at the same time to tell stories using books which do not have words to begin with. This is crucial in the development of spoken language and vocabulary and is a vital stepping stone towards becoming an accomplished reader and writer.
The Phonics Screening Check
The phonics screening check is designed to confirm whether children have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It will identify children who need extra help to improve their decoding skills.
The check consists of one list of 40 words, comprising 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words.
The phonics screening check is administered to all Year 1 children and children in Year 2 who did not meet the required standard in year 1 or have not taken it before. The screening check is administered towards the end of the summer term (June), on a one-to-one basis by the class teacher. The child’s phonic screening check score will be reported to parents by the end of the summer term.
https://powerphonicsbooks.com/phonics-page/
