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We teach reading explictly, as part of our daily English lessons. This includes VRIC sessions, daily phonics lessons, group reading, interventions, 1:1 reading with teachers, support staff and volunteers.
Our pupils are also taught the skills of reading and are immersed in literature through the non core curriculum.
We use a range of phonic books to support children in learning sounds in their phonics lessons alongside Comprehension. This approach helps pupils to practise sounds linked directly to teaching when reading at school and at home with parents. These include: Big Cat books, Oxford Reading books and Rigby Star. All of these books follow the National Book Banding system, which we adopt at Newcroft. Home / school diaries are used to share success and provide the next steps for pupils to work on at home.
All our children read book banded books, following this system from EYFS to Year 6 and also take home reading for pleasure books from the library to promote a love of reading.
This year we have introduced Dandelion Books from EYFS to the end of KS1. Dandelion Readers are focused books that match up to phonics progression in ‘Letters and Sounds.’ We also use these books to support those who need Phonics support in KS2.
If your child is in EYFS and KS1 your child will be provided with one of these books alongside a book banded book. This will give them the opportunity to practise the knowledge of sounds and the segmenting and blending skills they have learnt in phonics, at home, by reading decodable books. This will give you, as parents a better understanding of where your child is progressing at in phonics and support you, in helping them at home.
We teach phonics using Letters and Sounds in ability groupings from our Pre-School to Year 2. Once children move into Year 3, we teach phonics as an intervention for those who are still identified as needing support with reading, alongside other reading comprehension interventions. We use a variety of reading resources, including Bug Club, Big Cat Books, Oxford Reading Tree and Dandelion Readers to support our pupils in experiencing a wide range of literature at school and at home, which supports their learning of phonics.
Dandelion Readers books are issued to each Phonics Group, by their group teacher and link directly to the phonemes children are learning in their group at the time of issue. They are a superb way of reinforcing the phonemes and graphemes they are learning, through exciting stories.
Early Reading and Phonics intent and impact profile
Please click below to find useful parent resources linked to Letters and Sounds:
Letters and Sounds Resources and Guidance
Letters and Sounds is a detailed and systematic program for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. It follows six phases. The chart below details the six phases and what your child will learn in each.
Phonics Phases
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Phase 1 |
Phase 1 develops children’s abilities to listen to, make, explore and talk about sounds. 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. |
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Phase 2 |
Phase 2 develops children’s understanding of the 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. They learn to blend sounds together to make words. They will also segment words into their separate sounds and begin to read simple captions. Children also learn how to form the letters that make the phoneme in many practical ways. Phonemes- s a t p I n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll s ss |
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Phase 3 |
Phase 3 develops children’s understanding of new phonemes. By the end of Phase 3 the children will know one way of writing down each of the 44 phonemes. Phonemes - j v w x y z zz qu Consonant digraphs - ch sh th ng Vowel digraphs (and trigraphs) ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er |
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Phase 4 |
Phase 4 develops children’s understanding of adjacent consonants and consolidates all the phonemes they have learnt from the previous phases. 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. |
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Phase 5 |
Phase 5 introduces some new phonemes in the same way as in previous phases. Split digraphs. a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e Phase 5 introduces the idea that some graphemes can be pronounced in more than one way. This is a vital lesson for children to learn and they need to learn to apply it in their reading. In Phase 5 the children learn that some phonemes have more than one spelling It is important that children try to discover these rules by themselves by playing investigative type games and looking for patterns. Phonemes- ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, ey, |
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Phase 6 |
Phase 6 reinforces much of the learning from Phase 5, helps children to develop greater automaticity in reading, and begins to explore spelling rules and conventions, including how to write in the past and present tense. They learn about how to change words from the singular to the plural and how to identify the correct use of homophones. They also learn how to contract words. Suffixes- ing, ed, ful, ness, less, er, est, ly, en, y, ment |
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Phoneme |
The smallest unit of sound. There are approximately 44 phonemes in English (it depends on different accents). Phonemes can be put together to make words. |
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Grapheme |
A way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. tch or 4 letters e.g ough. |
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GPC |
This is short for Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa. |
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Digraph |
A grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme). |
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Trigraph |
A grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme). |
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Oral blending |
This involves hearing phonemes and being able to merge them together to make a word. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to blend written words. |
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Blending |
This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading. |
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Oral segmenting |
This is the act hearing a whole word and then splitting it up into the phonemes that make it. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to segment words to spell them. |
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Segmenting |
This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling. |
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Adjacent consonants
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Adjacent consonants are two or more consonants that appear next to one another within a word and they represent a different sound. e.g. stop - the 'st' are adjacent consonants because they appear next to each other and but also they spell two different sounds. /s/ and /t/ |
It is important that you pronounce the phonemes clearly and correctly. This will help your child when they learn to blend them together.
If you are learning a new phoneme with your child, ensure you say the phoneme over and over again with different a tone of voice so that they can really process it. Think of lots of words with that sound, that they know and show them pictures of those objects with the words written underneath.
If you want your child to learn to form a letter allow them to form the letter with a finger in the air, on the palm of the hand, on the back of another child, on a rough surface like the floor, in paint, glitter or sand. All these experiences will need to come before trying to write the letter on a whiteboard or piece of paper.
If your child is practising reading and writing words with a new phoneme they have learnt in school, encourage them to draw sound buttons under the word. They can clearly segment and then blend the phonemes together to read the word.
If you are looking at a phoneme with your child, tell your child the phoneme but explain that the phoneme is represented by the letter __ and tell them the letter name. They need to be able to distinguish between phonemes and letter names.
Our comprehensive guide to supporting your child at home
