SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PRIORITY
In order to build on our successes from the April 2021 Section 8 Monitoring Visit, we are continuing to take effective action in order to become a ‘good’ school by:
- Ensuring that all children (regardless of starting point) gain phonic knowledge and have increased opportunities to rehearse their reading skills in order to support their learning across the curriculum
- Ensuring that leaders’ plans to strengthen the curriculum for phonics are implemented effectively so that pupils quickly develop the skills they need to become fluent and confident readers
POLICY DOCUMENTS
ONE HUNDRED BOOKS
This section is under construction.
LETTERS AND SOUNDS
Phase 1 Letters and Sounds
Approx age: 3–4 | Nursery/Reception
Phase 1 supports children’s developing speaking and listening skills and linking of sounds and letters. Activities are divided into seven groups:
- Environmental sounds.
- Instrumental sounds.
- Body percussion.
- Rhythm and rhyme.
- Alliteration.
- Voice sounds.
- Oral blending and segmenting.
Children should be encouraged to enjoy books from as early an age as possible. However, the focus of this phase is on listening to and repeating sounds, rather than on directly reading words.
Phase 2 Letters and Sounds
Approx age: 4–5 | First term of Reception
Phase 2 introduces simple letter-sound correspondences. As each set of letters is introduced, children are encouraged to use their new knowledge to sound out and blend words. For example, they will learn to blend the sounds s–a–t to make the word sat.
Set 1:
s, a, t, p
at, a, sat, pat, tap, sap, as
Set 2:
i – it, is, sit, pit, tip
n – an, in, nip, pan, nap
m – am, man, mat, map, Tim
d – dad, and, sad, dim, Sid
Set 3:
g – tag, gag, sag, gas, pig
o – got, on, not, top, dog
c – can, cot, cop, cap, cod
k – kid, kit, Kim, Ken
Set 4:
ck – kick, sack, dock, sick, pocket
e – get, pet, ten, net, pen
u – up, mum, run, mug, cup
r – rip, ram, rat, rocket, carrot
Set 5:
h – had, him, his, hot, hut
b – but, big, back, bed, bus
f, ff – of, if, off, fit, fog, puff
l, ll – let, leg, lot, bell, doll
ss – less, hiss, mass, mess, boss
Phase 2 tricky words:
the, to, no, go, I, into
Phase 3 Letters and Sounds
Approx. age: 4–5 | Reception
In Phase 3, children build on the letter-sound correspondences learned in Phase 2. They learn consonant digraphs (sounds made up of two letters together such as ‘ch’ or ‘ll’) and long vowel sounds (such as ‘igh’ or ‘ai’).
Set 6:
j – jet, jam, jog, Jan
v – van, vet, velvet
w – wig, will, web
x – fox, box, six
Set 7:
y – yes, yet, yell
z – zip, zig-zag
zz – buzz, jazz
qu – quit, quick, liquid
Consonant digraphs:
ch – chip, chat, rich
sh – shop, shed, fish
th – thin, moth, that
ng – ring, thing, song
Vowel digraphs and trigraphs:
ai – rain, tail, aim
ee – bee, leek, see
igh – high, sigh, might
oa – boat, toad, foal
oo – boot, food, moon
oo – book, wood, foot
ar – park, art, car
or – for, torn, fork
ur – hurt, fur, surf
ow – cow, owl, town
oi – coin, boil, oil
ear – dear, shear, year
air – fair, pair, hair
ure – sure, pure, manure
er – dinner, summer, letter
Phase 3 tricky words:
he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my, her
Phase 4 Letters and Sounds
Approx. age: 4–5 | Reception
Children will consolidate their knowledge during this phase and they will learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants (for example, trap, strong, milk and crept).
Phase 4 tricky words:
said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what
Phase 5 Letters and Sounds
Approx. age: 5–6 | Year 1
Children will learn some new graphemes for reading. They will also be taught alternative pronunciations for known graphemes. For example, they have already learned ow as in cow and will now learn ow as in blow.
In addition, they will learn alternative spellings for known phonemes. For example, the sound /igh/ has been learned as the grapheme igh as in ‘night’, but can also be spelled y, ie, and i-e.
New graphemes for reading:
ay – day, play, crayon
ou – cloud, sound, about
ie – pie, tie, cried
ea – sea, meat, read
oy – toy, enjoy, boy
ir – bird, shirt, first
ue – blue, true, glue
aw – paw, claw, yawn
wh – wheel, whisper, when
ph – photo, dolphin, alphabet
ew – new, crew, flew
oe – toe, foe, tomatoes
au – Paul, launch, haul
a-e – make, game, snake
e-e – these, Eve, extreme
i-e – like, time, slide
o-e – home, bone, pole
u-e – rule, June, flute
Phase 5 tricky words:
oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could
Phase 6 Letters and sounds
Approx. age: 6–7 | Year 2
In Phase 6 children will read with increasing fluency. They will have learned most of the common letter-sound correspondences and can read familiar words automatically without needing to sound out and blend.
Children will work on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters, and so on.
BUG CLUB READING
This section is under construction.
BUG CLUB PHONICS
This section is under construction.
ACCELERATED READER
Accelerated Reader, from Renaissance Learning UK, is firmly established within Key Stage 2.
Children take the STAR reading test which gives them a reading age in years and months. This assessment also matches a range of books to the child’s reading age so that they can choose appropriate titles that will provide a challenge and hopefully lead to progress in reading.
When the children have completed a reading book, they take an on-line comprehension quiz, usually comprising 5 to 10 questions. If they achieve at least 80% in the quiz their word count increases by the number of words in the book and they are encouraged to try to choose a slightly more challenging title to read next.
We celebrate the children’s achievements in adding to their personal word count. A designated page on our website provides a weekly update of the school’s collective word count and individual children are included in our Word Millionaires honours board. For the past five years, we have rewarded the first child to achieve Millionaire status with a £25 book voucher. Past winners have come from Year 5 and Year 6, but this year’s first word millionaire was from a Year 4 class!
Our school record word count during the year 2018-9 peaked at almost 98 million. The pandemic understandably took its toll on our word count during 2019/20 and 2020/21, but we are aiming to return to previous high levels as schools face fewer restrictions in terms of sharing books and class bubble closures.
As part of our regular data collection to monitor children’s progress and achievement, the children continue to take the STAR reading test at the start of each term and this is then supported with a SATs-style reading comprehension test at the end of each term.
For the first time this year (2021/22) children reading at greater depth in Year 2 have begun to use Accelerated Reader.
SOUNDS-WRITE
Sounds-Write is a quality phonics programme. Its purpose is to provide a scheme to teach reading, spelling and writing. We will introduce Sounds~Write to children who still have gaps in their phonics knowledge after following the Letters and Sounds programme.
The Sounds-Write programme teaches the children to understand the way the alphabet (referred to as ‘code’) works. Because of the complex system of the alphabet code in the English language, often, in the early stages of learning to read and spell, pupils will not be able to spell some sounds using the correct spellings. However, pupils taught using Sounds-Write are more likely to be able to write almost anything they want using plausible (phonetic) spellings for sounds. As they progress through Key Stage 1, pupils learn systematically how words are spelled in English. The ability to express oneself in writing from the start of school gives children enormous confidence, which naturally feeds back into the other kinds of learning taking place within the school curriculum.
PARENT INFORMATION LEAFLETS
We have produced two information leaflets to date this year, to keep parents and carers up-to-date with developments in our reading curriculum, providing details of our use of Bug Club in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 and the whole school 100 BOOKS initiative.
More leaflets are planned for later in the year.
COMMON EXCEPTION WORDS
Common exception words are words where the usual spelling rule doesn’t apply; such as the common exception words “sugar”, “improve”, “climb” and “because”. Some of these exception words are used frequently, so children are introduced to common exception words in year 1 and year 2.
The Year 1 and 2 lists of common exception words can be downloaded by clicking the links below:
GRAPHEMES AND PHONEMES
The 44 English sounds can be divided into two major categories – consonants and vowels.
Clickable squares based on the above image which will play a recording of each of the sounds (to be created)
PHONICS WEBLINKS
This section is under construction.