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St James’Church of England

Primary School www.stjamescehaydock@ldst.org.uk

Phonics Policy

Learn, laugh and live with the love of God

Presented to Governors: Spring 2020 Review date due: Spring 2021 Signed _____________________Chair of Governors ___________________Head teacher St James’ C.E. Primary School, Lyme Street, Haydock, St Helens, WA11 0NL Telephone: 01744 678545 Facsimile: 01744 678546

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Intent At St James’ C.E. Primary School, it is our intent that all children are taught to read, write and apply phonological knowledge using a systematic and synthetic approach to the teaching of phonics from the beginning of Reception. By ensuring that we provide consistent, high quality phonics teaching it is our intent that all children have the necessary knowledge and skills to enable them to tackle the complex process of reading, spelling and writing.

Implementation

We will implement this policy by:

Planning At St. James’ we subscribe to www.phonicsplay.co.uk. This site, which is based on the Letters and Sounds document, provides: phonics planning support for teachers; interactive phonics games and many teaching ideas and resources to: help children to learn to hear phonemes; recognise graphemes and develop the blending and segmenting skills that are vital for learning to read and spell. The username and password can be obtained from the Phonics Lead. All the planning and resources can be found on the www.phonicsplay.co.uk website and on the shared drive in the Phonics folder. Teachers use their professional judgements to enhance and adapt their planning to meets the needs of their current cohort. The ‘Jolly Phonics’ songs are used to support the teaching of new sounds.

Teaching Teachers annotated Phonics Planning is kept in their Planning folder which is kept in class. Phonics is taught to the whole class in discrete, daily sessions which last approximately 30 minutes. Letters and sounds (phonemes) are introduced to the children one at a time. We aim to teach four sounds each week. Each teacher follows the teaching sequence of: Introduce - Let the children know the learning objective and get them motivated for the session. Revisit - Tackle any areas of previous learning that assessments have shown to need more work. Teach - Explicitly teach the phoneme/grapheme or skill identified in the learning objective. Practise - Play games to rehearse the new learning as many times as possible.

Apply - Read or write sentences that involve the new learning.

Phase One (Reception-depending on the cohort)

Activities are 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) approximately 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.

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Phase Three (Reception) approximately 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 Four (Reception/Recap at the start of Y1- to be secure before starting Phase 5)

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) Children move on to the "complex code". They 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)

Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.

Coverage of Phonics is linked to the school expectation document which includes non-negotiable milestones. (See Appendix 1). Each class has a Working Wall which displays sounds taught from the current phonics stage that the children are working on and builds up during the course of the phase. This is referred to by the teacher and the children throughout the day. Key Phonics vocabulary is taught by the Teacher and used by the children e.g. phoneme, grapheme, digraph, split digraph, trigraph, consonant, vowel. Letter names are taught alongside the sound that they represent. ‘Tricky’ (non-decodable) words are displayed on red card and cut out so that the shape of the word can be seen. When teaching tricky words, letter names are used as phonetic application does not apply. We use letter names when teaching these words because we can’t sound them out and the children are aware of this. Each class has the same alphabet frieze

Home Reading The sequence of reading books used in Reception and Key Stage 1 ensures a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge that is matched closely to our Phonics programme. Teachers give pupils sufficient practice in reading and re-reading books that match the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know, both at school and at home. In Reception and Year 1, phonetically decodable books are sent home to support phonetic development and fluency in addition to another book at their reading level. In Year 2, children take home a mixture of phonetically decodable books, if appropriate, and books according to their reading level and zone of proximal development (ZPD) as assessed using Accelerated Reader. Children who are reading below the expected standard for their year group are also targeted for daily reading by and LSA. Class teachers listen to these children read at least once per week.

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Application across the curriculum As part of their rich English curriculum, children at St. James’ are exposed to a wide variety of books and texts to encourage their love of reading. In KS1, we actively encourage children to apply their phonic knowledge to help them decode unfamiliar texts and write down their ideas. In Reception, children are giving the opportunity to develop their mark making into early writing through setting exciting contexts for writing for a purpose using their phonic knowledge throughout continuous provision. At St James’, teachers plan activities for rehearsal of grapheme phoneme correspondence (GPCs) that the children need to work on across the curriculum as we believe that, as with any new learning, children will become confident much more quickly when given opportunities to apply what they have learned as soon as possible and in as many varied, creative and fun ways as possible. Teachers highlight correct GPCs in green when they see its application in reading and writing tasks across the curriculum. All children in YR and Y1 take home phonetically decodable books

Assessment Each class teacher has an Assessment folder with their class assessment data in. The Headteacher also keeps master copies of all tracking sheets in central Assessment folder for each year group. Daily formative assessments are carried out by the class teacher and logged onto the phase tracking sheet. Immediate targeted intervention is provided in the afternoon for any child who has not made adequate progress within a session (See Appendix 2). At the end of each Phonics Phase, summative assessments are completed on a 1.1 basis to assess: recognition of phonemes taught; ability to write graphemes taught; ability to blend and segment using the phonemes and graphemes taught (see Appendix 3). This information is used to identify areas that need to be revised or repeated and to allocate targeted intervention. Assessments are carried out at the end of each phase for the reading and writing of common exception words (see Appendix 4). During Summer 2, the children in Reception complete a Phonics Screening Check. Then, at the end of each half term, each child in Y1 completes a Phonics Screening Check. This assessment gathers information on the children’s ability to read words using the sounds that they have been taught. This is recorded onto an excel document and analysed by the class teacher (see Appendix 5). This information is used to identify areas that need to be revised or repeated and to allocate appropriate intervention.

Term Test to be used

Reception – end of Summer 2013

Year 1 – Autumn 1 2014

Year 1 Autumn 2 2015

Year 1 – Spring 1 2019

Year 1 – Spring 2 2019

Year 1 – Summer 1 Current Statutory Test

In Year 1, children take part in the National Phonics screening test during the Summer Term. Children who do not pass the test in Year 1 are given targeted intervention in Year 2 and are re-tested at the end of Year 2. Reading Wise ZIP, which follows Letters and Sounds, is also used to support children who need additional intervention in KS1.

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Those children who do not pass the Phonics Screening Check at the end of Y2 will be highlighted to the SENCO for further assessment. In KS2, Reading Wise is used to support those children unable to read through a phonological approach to enable them to access texts in other ways. This may include SEN and EAL children. For a full and detailed summary of special needs provision at St James, please see the Additional Needs Policy.

Children in the bottom 20% of the cohort Children who are assessed at being within the bottom 20% of the cohort (not including children identified with specific SEN needs) will receive targeted intervention through assessment for learning. These interventions will be delivered by the adults identified as having the skills most appropriate to support pupils’ learning and accelerate progress. The Key Stage Leader will be responsible for organising, monitoring and tracking impact alongside the class teacher. Impact will be reported to SLT at the end of each half term and the needs for additional support agreed.

Involving parents It is essential to involve parents in their children’s learning. Workshops for parents are run throughout the year during our Reading Mornings. These workshops focus on developing parents’ subject knowledge in the teaching of reading through phonics and on supporting them to work alongside their children in phonics activities. Phonics homework is sent home in YR and Y1 linked to phonemes taught that week.

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Appendix 1

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Appendix 2

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Appendix 3

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Appendix 4

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Appendix 5