Phonics at Bournehall Primary School is taught following the Fisher Family Trust “Success for All Phonics” programme. This is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme that has been validated by the DfE. Phonics is an integral part of the curriculum across the EYFS (Reception class) and Key Stage 1 (continuing into Key Stage 2 as necessary). Lessons are taught daily to ensure that children develop the skills needed to become successful readers and writers. Children are regularly assessed and there are additional planned intervention groups for children needing extra support. Success for All Phonics comes with a selection of shared readers which we will be supplementing with closely matched books from other schemes.
FFT Success for All Phonics
"FFT Success for All Phonics is a complete systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme that has been validated by the Department for Education.
Aimed at nursery children upwards and pioneered by the Success for All Foundation, FFT’s second generation programme is offered on a not-for-profit basis and is a highly comprehensive offering.
Our ambition is to enable success for all children and inspire a lifelong love of reading." (FFT - 2022)
Please click on the image above to access helpful videos and tips for reading at home.
You will be sent a login to access the shared readers library.
Phonics Phrases
"For each of the Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences in Success for All Phonics we teach children a short alliterative phrase to help them to remember it, e.g. for ‘s’ we have ‘The snake slides and slithers.’ If your child is having difficulty in remembering a GPC, reminding them of the alliterative phrase might help. We also have helpful video guidance for this that can be viewed here."
https://vimeo.com/showcase/9340990
What is Phonics?
Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write by learning to associate letters or groups of letters with the sounds they represent. There are 44 main sounds in the English language. Each sound is represented by a grapheme (the written representation of a sound).
At Bournehall Primary, we use “Success for All Phonics” as our systematic synthetic phonic programme. Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching where words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes).
Children are taught how to:
- recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes;
- identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as /sh/ or /oo/;
- to blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word.
- to segment words into individual sounds
Key terms we use in our teaching:
Phoneme – a single unit of sound
Grapheme – a written letter, or group of letters that represents a sound
Consonants – b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z
Vowels – a, e, i, o, u
Blend – to put or merge the sounds together to make a word (e.g. the sounds c-a-t are blended to the word ‘cat’.)
Segment – to break down the word into individual sounds to spell (e.g. dog can be split into the sounds d-o-g.).
Year One
Phase 5 – Year 1 (Terms 1 to 3)
Teaches remaining long vowels, including split digraphs.
ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, ew
a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, -y, ow, soft c, soft g
ire, are, tch, oe, ph
Children learn to read nonsense words along with CCVCC, CCCVC and CCCVCC words. All Key Stage 1 CEWs are taught and reviewed, and children learn the spelling and grammar conventions from the Year 1 NC.
Phase 6 – Year 1 (Term 3)
Focuses on reviewing and consolidating all Year 1-level content.
Letter Formation Cues
"When children learn to write lower case letters in the correct way, we use a short rhyme to help them remember how they should do this, e.g. for ‘s’ this is ‘Left around, right around, from head to tail.’ We want children to form their letters in the correct way as early as possible and prevent them from developing poor letter writing habits that will need to be corrected later."
Click HERE for the alliterative phrases and letter writing cues
Reception Class
Phase 2 – Reception (Term 1)
Children learn the short sounds and use these to read CVC words. A limited number of Common Exception Words (CEWs) are introduced in the context of the Shared Readers, and children practise writing new and previously learnt sounds in upper-case and lower-case letters.
|
Set 1 – s, a, t, p |
Set 2 – i, n, m, d |
Set 3 – g, o, c, k |
Set 4 – ck, e, u, r |
|
Set 5 – h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss |
Set 6 - j, v, w |
Set 7 - x, y, z |
Phase 3 – Reception (Terms 2 and 3)
Children learn consonant digraphs and long vowel digraphs and read CCVC and CVCC words. Children are introduced to two-syllable words. Spelling and sentence writing with known sounds are introduced. Common alternative spellings / pronunciations are introduced.
Consonant digraphs – zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng
Vowel digraphs – ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
Phase 4 – Reception (Term 3)
Focuses on reviewing and consolidating all Reception-level content in preparation for Year 1. Decoding skills are applied to more challenging word structures.
The Key Stage One Phonics Screening Check
It is a statutory requirement for children in Year One to be given a phonics screening. This contains real and pseudo words (sometimes know as nonsense words or alien words). It is designed to see if children have reached a standard in phonics before Year Two. The assessment is administered by class teachers in a set week in June. The children will do practice screenings throughout the academic year so the set up will be familiar to them. The standard mark is unknown each year. It is only published once the Local Authority has scores from all schools.
Click here to see an extract from a Phonics Screening Check.
