Phonics at Woods Loke
“Staff expertly support pupils to ensure that all pupils have a secure phonics base.”
“…the vast majority of pupils are reading with high levels of confidence and fluency by the time they get into key stage 2.”
Ofsted Report May 2022
phonics
As a school, we are currently exploring how to further develop our systematic, synthetic phonics programme.
Click below to read about our approach to Phonics and Reading, find out more about sound buttons or listen to the pronunciation of each of the phonemes taught during our phonics lessons:
At Woods Loke, we consider reading to be at the heart of everything. To find out more about our amazing library please click here. We see this as combining two key areas:
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developing an ability to read with fluency and understanding
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growing a love of reading through immersion in a wide range of stories and texts
Parent Workshops
Every year we hold a series of phonic workshops for parents. The aim of these sessions is to give parents and carers information about the national Phonics Screening Check, which all year 1 children will take part in during the Summer term. We will discuss how the check is administered, what it means for your child and how you could help your child with their phonics at home. These sessions are also open to parents of year 2 children who are being re-screened. Sessions will run at 9.15am, 2.40pm and 5.30pm and will last approximately 30 minutes - though you need only attend one session. Further information will be sent home nearer the time.
We look forward to seeing you.
How phonics is taught at Woods Loke
Here are Woods Loke we follow the Letters and Sounds document to teach phonics sessions, with some additional resources from the Jolly Phonics scheme in the EYFS. More information about Letters and Sounds can be found here. We are currently developing a new phonics programme in line with the recent DoE Reading Framework publication.
In the Early Years Foundation Stage and in Key Stage 1 phonics is taught discretely every day. All phonics sessions are delivered by a qualified teacher to the whole class, with targeted and effective TA support.
The six phases of phonics are taught as follows:
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Phase 1 - starts in Nursery and continues throughout the EYFS and into Reception.
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Phase 2 - taught in Reception.
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Phase 3 - taught in Reception.
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Phase 4 - begins in Reception and is revisited in Year 1.
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Phase 5 - taught in Year 1.
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Phase 6 - taught in Year 2 and continues into Year 3 SPaG sessions.
Children who need extra support or those who need to revisit a phase do so during targeted intervention sessions, which run throughout the week across Key Stages 1 and 2.
Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
All children in year 1 take part in the statutory national Phonics Screening check during the Summer term. The check is a booklet containing 40 words, which the child reads one to one with their class teacher. These words are a mixture of real words and nonsense words, which the children often refer to as 'alien words'. The screening has been designed to check that each child has developed the expect level of phonic knowledge for their year group. The children do not need to be able to identify which words are real and which are not, though the presence of an alien image beside the nonsense words means that most children can!
The screening checks that each child can:
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Sound out and blend graphemes in order to read simple words e.g. n-igh-t.
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Read phonically decodable one-syllable and two-syllable words, e.g. cat, sand, windmill.
This year, due to the current situation, the screening will take place in Year 2 towards the end of the Autumn term. More details about this will be shared with parents. Please ensure that your child is in school during this week.
Home learning
There are lots of resources and activities available online which can be accessed from home.
We use Phonics Play during our phonics lessons and the children are familiar with many of the games and activities. Unfortunately our in-school subscription does not extend to home use, but some games are free to play. A yearly subscription costs £12.
www.ictgames.com/literacy.html
ICT Games is a site we often use in school as it has a wide variety of free English and Maths games. Some of these games are tablet friendly too.
This website contains information about the Letters and Sounds Phonics programme and links to lots of different games.
Twinkl has a wide variety of printable resources which cover all areas of the curriculum. In school we pay for a yearly subscription, but some of the resources can be accessed for free. To access this website you will however need to create an account.