Phonics and Early Reading

Phonics and Early Reading

At All Saints, we teach daily phonics sessions in EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2. Our phonics sessions are carefully planned to ensure they are effective and progressive. They are fun, involving lots of songs, speaking, listening and games. We plan for the children to be active and fully participate in the sessions, ensuring high engagement.

We follow the government approved Essential Letters and Sounds phonics scheme and teach this through our own bespoke curriculum resources recently created by the staff here at All Saints. In EYFS and Year 1, we ensure that opportunities to consolidate the sounds and skills the children have learned in their daily phonics sessions are provided for through the continuous and enhanced provision offered in the classrooms. This ensures that regular opportunities to practice the skills of segmenting and blending are provided and phonics is fully embedded within the wider curriculum.

What's new?

After the DfE published The Reading Framework in Summer 2021, and removed Letters and Sounds from their validated list of phonics programmes we took the decision to follow the DfE validated Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme Essential Letters and Sounds. Essential Letters and Sounds provides a simple, consistent structure which ensures children are taught phonics to the highest standard. We have chosen to continue to use our bespoke phonics resources alongside the ELS programme as the resources are closely matched to the needs of our children and have had a significant impact on the children’s attainment in phonics, with 89% of Year 1s passing their Phonics Screening Check in Summer 2022.

To supplement our new phonics scheme, we have introduced our new bespoke phonics resource which has been put together by Mr Horton; our Assistant Headteacher and English lead and Mrs Fletcher; and our EYFS, Phonics and Early Reading lead. The design and illustrations are by Miss Yates-Smith, a member of our support staff at All Saints. Each sound has its own image, story, song and hand writing rhyme attached to it, making our method of teaching phonics fun and multi-sensory. This resource, alongside the implementation of ELS, is being used across KS1.

We have also purchased more phonics books which have been carefully selected to match the children’s learning, ensuring that the books they take home include the sounds and words they have been working on, allowing for consolidation of learning. This has ensured an even closer match to the children’s phonics and reading ability level.

Useful Links
Lots of free printable resources for phonics learning
 
A variety of different games to help children with segmenting and blending.
www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html
 
Phonics Play
A site packed with interactive phonics games and resources to help children learn to read
www.phonicsplay.co.uk
 
A site full of information about phonics with many free resources
www.thechildrensliteracycharity.org.uk/home-learning/phonics/
 
Phonics Bloom
Lots of interactive phonics games helping teach children the relationship between letters and sounds