PHONICS

INTENT

At Basildon CE Primary school we aim to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of key stage one through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a whole school approach that promotes enthusiastic, independent readers who have a love of reading and become lifelong readers and writers.

At Basildon, we will follow the Monster Phonics Systematic Synthetic Phonics Scheme across foundation stage and ks1 and where needed in ks2. Through Monster Phonics we will use colourful and exciting resources with characters that motivate and enthuse children.

IMPLEMENTATION

What phonics looks like in lessons:

Engaging, fun and interactive.
Whole class high quality discrete phonics lessons to ensure that phonics is embedded across the curriculum.
High quality phonics sessions using the Monster phonics resources to ensure consistency.
A balance of blending and segmenting, speaking and listening skills taught across a week
Monster phonics uses a colour coded grapheme system with each coloured grapheme being linked with a monster character. This provides a prompt that uses fun monster characters to promote understanding.
Strategies taught to identify and decode `tricky words’ within the English language
Multi-sensory approach to the teaching of phonics, including using actions to support effective delivery of phonics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-QDMduJgE
Use of pure sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRoFpvC0yn0
Using phonics lessons as an opportunity for learning and embedding vocabulary.
Every lesson the outcome and why it is important will be shared with children.
Monster phonics sessions use a five part lesson structure: Revisit/review, Teach, Hook (to engage in the form of a story, song or video), Activity (to practise and apply to reading or writing), Plenary (to review learning and consolidate).
Flashcards will be used with actions using`my go-our go-your go’, beginning with picture then grapheme, saying sound, action and then skywriting to practise letter formation. When ready, plain text flashcards will be used.
Appropriate level of challenge for each child.
A mixture of whole class, group and individual work
Dots and lines used for phonemes for sound buttons.
Correct letter formation will be reinforced through phonics sessions.
Monster phonics may be supplemented by Phonics Play, Letters and Sounds and other ICT games.
Monster phonics progression documents will be followed.

What phonics at Basildon looks like outside of lessons:

Embedding monster phonics in the environment and throughout the curriculum and routines with many opportunities for application, for example, words on bananas for snack time, passwords to the classroom.
Learning environment will support children in their learning and application of phonics eg. word mats, word lists.
Letter formation for all letters of the alphabet will be taught in the Reception year using simple print in 3 extra discrete lessons each week.
Through regular guided reading sessions with an adult phonics is practised and applied. Adult will model sound talking and blending. Each child will have a copy of the text and the format will be either:
As a group read the book together each child tracking with a finger children read with their partner individually to ascertain decoding skills.
A record of guided reading will be kept to include assessment of: Ability to decode and blend, CEW (Common Exception Words) knowledge, fluency, expression and intonation, understanding of punctuation, understanding of language and context, participation, confidence.
At the end of the week the guided reading text or a text using the sounds the children have already learnt will be sent home for children to practise further at home, building confidence. In addition to this, children will take home a quality non-decodable text which can be read to them or shared, to extend vocabulary, understanding of story structure and topic knowledge and to promote a love of reading for pleasure.
Reading books will be given to children using the monster phonics placement procedure to match the most recently secured GPC’s to an appropriate texts, so that books in which 90% words can be read accurately. If 90%of words cannot be read accurately and fluently, we will look further back in the placement chart.
Daily interventions where needed to fill gaps and meet individual children’s needs.
Regular phonics staff training/discussions in staff meetings
Parents/carers will be invited to attend a monster phonics webinar parent information session.
Parents/carers informed of phonics learning through class dojo, meetings with parents.
Assessments collated and results analysed by phonics lead. Intervention success analysed.

SEN

Targeted individual/small group phonics interventions to fill gaps/consolidate/enable children to keep up with their peers
Support/extra modelling, scaffolding or prompting within whole class sessions
Extra time given to flashcards to reinforce learning of phonemes
Working in partnership with parents/carers to provide support.
Using a range of learning styles and provide multi-sensory experiences.
Encouraging use of sound/word mats to support writing in phonics
Monster phonics taught daily in year 3 for all those who did not pass their phonics screening in ks1

IMPACT

Children will be able to:

recall phonemes with good grapheme, phoneme correspondence
segment and blend confidently with real and pseudo words
Recognise in reading and writing the tricky words taught
apply phonics skills fluently when reading
apply their phonics skills and apply to other areas of the curriculum.
A Phonetic skill or phoneme is mastered when the children are able to read confidently and apply the phoneme in a range of words, unaided. The children should be able to apply the sound and their segmenting and blending to a range of real and nonsense words.

Formative Assessment:

Verbal Feedback – the vast majority of feedback is in conversation with the pupil, allowing misconceptions to be spotted and effectively addressed at an early stage.
Assessments from each lesson to inform next step planning

Summative Assessment:

Regular termly assessment to inform rate of progress for individual children using the monster phonics assessments using this to create an action plan of interventions/how gaps will be addressed.
Regular assessment of tricky words to inform planning.
All year one children take the ‘Phonics Screening Check’ - a statutory assessment required by legislation. Those who do not meet the pass mark will be given support and intervention programmes in year two to provide them with sufficient knowledge and understanding to re-take the ‘Phonics Screening Check’ and obtain a pass mark. Those children who do not obtain the required level set by the ‘Phonics Screening Check’ will receive phonics teaching in the first term of year three – which will be further supported throughout the year and across key stage two with a phonics and/or spelling intervention programme.
Practice `Phonics Screening Check’ to take place in December/ March to identify areas for future learning.
Use of summative and formative assessment to inform the planning of effective and differentiated provision for all children.
Phonics tracking shared termly with phonics lead.
Moderation through mini mod
Pupil progress meetings.

Vocabulary Progression

Subject leaders map tier two vocabulary across each milestone and tier three vocabulary for each unit. Dual coding is used to support the discreet teaching of vocabulary across the curriculum.

Knowledge Progression

To learn more , please click on the button below.

Reception

Year 1

Year 2

Diversity

The school’s curriculum driver of diversity underpins the entire curriculum. Teachers actively seek opportunities to promote and celebrate diversity across the curriculum where ever appropriate.