Brisbane Park Infant School
Phonics
At Brisbane Park Infant school we use systematic teaching of phonics to support the development of children’s reading and writing. Children will progress in their phonic development as they learn letters and the sounds they make to using and applying this knowledge to read and write words and later sentences. Children are given the opportunities to use and apply their phonic learning through a variety of games and activities both independently and with an adult. We base our phonics planning on ’Bug Club Phonics' in Reception and Year 1. Once children have completed the Bug Phonics up to Phase 6 they move on to learning spelling rules, this is in Year 2. Year 2 have daily support for spelling sessions.
Intent
To recognise, say and write each phoneme within each phonics phase.
To be able to use phonic their phonic knowledge to blend and segment phonetically decodable words.
To use their phonic knowledge to be able to read and write words.
Implementation
to help ensure our intent is met we will:-
Provide a systematic approach to the teaching of phonics.
Provide daily lessons which follow the structure of a pacey phonics session – revisit, teach, apply and practise
Provide opportunities in the wider curriculum to embed phonics knowledge
Provide booster sessions for children identified as struggling with their phonics development.
Impact
evidence of successful implementation will be evident by:-
Children who are confident in phonics and are demonstrating skills through reading and writing.
Children who are confident with segmenting and blending.
End of phase assessment outcomes.
Successful Phonics Screening results in Year 1.
Planning is based on the Bug Club Phonics scheme. Class teachers adapt lessons plans to meet the needs of individual children as required. Children are given the opportunity to revisit and apply knowledge throughout the structure of the lessons. Phonics takes place five times a week for 20 minute sessions.
Children are taught in their own classes for phonics sessions by their own class teacher. Senior Teaching Assistants provide support for identified children during phonics sessions and also take children for booster sessions as needed.
Advised progress through phases:-
It is important that children move swiftly through each phonics phase and are given opportunities to revise and consolidate their knowledge at different times. The following is a guide of the progression of phonics and approximate timings.
Phase One (Nursery/Reception) activities divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.
Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeks – Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.
Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeks – The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the ‘simple code’ i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language.
Phase 4 (Reception) 4 to 6 weeks – No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants e.g. swim, clap, jump.
Phase Five (throughout year 1) – Now we move on to the ‘complex code.’ Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.
Phase Six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond) also known as Support for Spelling. This phase is for children who are secure in Phase 5 and have passed the phonics screening in Year 1. This looks at spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters and spelling patterns.