Phonics Teaching and Learning

• The aim of phonics teaching is to secure phonic knowledge and skills so children can become independent readers and writers.
• Reading and writing are like a code; phonics is teaching the child to crack the code.
• Phonics teaches children the skills of blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.
• Children are taught the correspondences between sounds (phonemes) in spoken language and letters (graphemes) in written language. These correspondences help the children to read and spell words.

As a school we have adopted the DfE approved Twinkl Phonics Programme to deliver high quality Phonics learning.

It provides a multisensory, structured approach to learning with mnemonics, actions, rhymes and sounds to help reinforce sound and letter recognition.

It developed both reading and writing skills and provides opportunities to apply these new skills.

It includes active repetition to ensure recall of GPCs and common exception words.

It develops knowledge and confidence in the 4 areas

- Rapid recall of GPCs

- Rapid recall of tricky/ common exception words

- Effective blending skill

- Effective segmenting skills

Level One is embedded within the Early Years ongoing provision after an initial focus on each of the areas.

Level Two

Introduces the initial sounds, first set of common exception words, and begins to look at segmenting and blending.

It is broken into 3 parts and taught slowly with repetition to secure the learning. Home reading books compliment the phonics learning from the classroom.

Level Three

 At this stage the children are introduced to digraphs and trigraphs. Learning to find them within words and then read them on sight with fluency and accuracy.

Level 4

This level has a focus on CVCC and CCVC words, reading and writing words with adjacent consonants confidently. This also looks at polysyllabic words and words that have three adjacent consonants.

Level 5

This is taught when the children start Year 1:

It introduces alternative digraphs for Level 3 sounds and builds on all previous learning to ensure our children are fluent readers.

Lesson Structure 

Key Terminology