Phonics in our school:

Intent  

At Richard Durning’s Primary school, we deliver high-quality, stimulating and systematic phonics sessions to ensure all children develop a secure understanding of letters and sounds. We use and follow the Red Rose Letters and Sounds which is a scheme made by Lancashire County Council. This enables the children to read fluently and apply their knowledge to spell accurately across the curriculum.  

 

We aim for the children to become successful and fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. This is achieved through daily phonics teaching and activities combined with a whole-language approach that fosters a culture of a ‘Love of Reading.’  

 

Aims  

Our phonics teaching aims to: 

*Teach children to blend for reading and segment for spelling 

*Enable children to read and write all 44 graphemes in the English language 

*Develop fluent readers through consistent practice 

*Deliver exciting, interactive and engaging phonics lessons 

*Teach strategies for remembering common exception and key words so that spelling and reading of these words becomes automatic 

*To encourage children to apply their phonics skills in all curriculum areas 

*To ensure all staff have excellent subject knowledge through CPD training  

 

Teaching and Learning; Development of Skills and Knowledge  

At Richard Durning’s Primary School, a high quality, systematic and exciting phonics session is taught for at least 20 minutes each day. We follow the ‘Red Rose Letters and Sounds’ programme. We ensure phonics is delivered with a multi-sensory approach, using visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities that are fun and engaging for all children. Children’s progress is continually assessed to ensure progression and interventions are put in place to support individual children’s needs. Additionally we ensure that phonics is embedded as part of a broad and rich curriculum that provides children with opportunities to reinforce and apply their phonic knowledge and skills.  

Reading 

Phonics skills are continually modelled, reinforced and embedded when children are engaging in shared reading, 1:1 reading or during any guided reading sessions. Home reading books are carefully selected to match the children’s developing phonic knowledge, so that every child can experience success in their reading by using the skills they have been taught. The children are taught to sound out graphemes and blend them together from left to right. Once children are confident with the taught phonemes they are encouraged to read words with those sounds with increasing fluency, rather than sounding out. 

 

Common Exception Words 

The children are taught high frequency words that do not conform completely to grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. These are called ‘tricky’ words. Children are specifically taught the ‘tricky’ part of the word and strategies to remember this. They are taught to apply their knowledge of these words in reading and writing. The words are taken from phases 2 to 5 of the ‘Red Rose’ programme.  

 

Writing 

Children are taught to segment phonemes and use grapheme knowledge to spell plausible words independently. Common exception words are expected to be spelt correctly from memory, with errors addressed during feedback and when working with the children.