English Subject Leader: Mrs Emma Firth
Phonics
How we teach phonics
In Foundation Stage and KS1 we follow the systematic synthetic phonic based programme, Letters and Sounds. We teach phonics using the Phonics Bug scheme in Reception and KS1.This programme is used daily to teach children key phonics skills such as grapheme (letter) and phoneme (sound) correspondence and oral blending and segmenting of sounds. These skills are then developed further so that the children are able to blend sounds to read and segment sounds to spell. Alongside developing the children’s phonics skills, they also learn to read and spell high frequency and common exception words.
Definitions
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
A grapheme is the letter or letters representing a phoneme.
A digraph is two letters that make one sound.
A trigraph is three letters that make one sound.
A split digraph is when the two letters making the sound are not adjacent.
Blending is recognising the letter sounds in a written word and merging them in order in which they are written to pronounce
Segmenting is identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word and writing down letters for each sound to form the word
What is the phonics screening check?
Children in Year 1 throughout the country will all be taking part in a phonics screening check during the same week in June.
This will commence week beginning Monday 7th June 2021.
Children in Year 2 will also take the check if they did not achieve the required result when in Year 1 or if they have not taken the test before.
Bug Club Phonics
Each child in Reception to Year 2 have access to an online account for Phonics Bug Active Learn. Each child has a personalised homepage where they'll find the eBooks they've been allocated by the teacher and motivating rewards. The online reading world ensures children can access independent reading resources anywhere at any time.
Username: first 4 letters of first name and first 4 letters of surname
Password: kayesfirst2079
School Code: 79qc
If you have any problems accessing the account, please email your class teacher using DB Primary.
You can log in on the following link www.activelearnprimary.co.uk
Supporting your child at home
There are a number of things that parents can do to support phonics and early reading development:
- Make time for your child to read their school book to you
- With all books, encourage your child to ‘sound out’ unfamiliar words and then blend from left to right rather than looking at pictures to guess
- Immerse your child in a love of reading by promoting it
Games and online resources
Phonics Pupil Voice
Reading
Throughout the school we encourage our children to read a wide range of texts and to develop a love of reading. English lessons, Guided Reading and regular story time ensure the children are introduced to a wide range of authors and genres. The children take home books to read from a set of books including schemes such as Oxford Reading Tree, Project X and a range of ‘real’ books The children are encouraged to read every evening at home and we encourage adults to ask questions about what they have read to develop their comprehension skills.
Reading Pupil Voice
Year 1 - Writing
Year 1 - Handwriting
Year 4 - Writing newspaper reports.
Writing Pupil Voice
