At Wolviston Primary School, we are committed to the delivery of excellence in the teaching of Phonics. We aim to develop each child so that they are able to read fluently and confidently as well as enriching their vocabulary and developing a love of reading.
To deliver phonics, we use the Floppy’s Phonics programme. This programme is a content-rich systematic synthetic phonics programme that allows for a two-pronged approach to teaching phonics. It allows for a focused phonics provision along with integration and sustained support in the wider curriculum.
The Floppy’s Phonics programme teaches the letter-sound correspondences of the English alphabetic code explicitly and comprehensively for reading and spelling. It includes the characters of Floppy the dog, Biff, Chip and Kipper and their family and friends, which engages children fully for the phonics teaching & learning, vocabulary enrichment and language comprehension
Initially children’s listening skills are developed through the use of music, environmental sounds and rhyme. During their journey through the Reception and Key Stage 1 they are taught the 44 phonemes (sounds) that make up all the sounds required for reading and spelling. These phonemes include those made by just one letter ‘b as in bed’ and those that are made by two ‘ai as in rain or three letters ‘igh as in high’.
Children are taught the key skills of blending and segmenting to be able to read and write.
As the children grow in confidence and experience, they are introduced to alternative ways of representing the same sound, eg ‘ee’ can be represented as ‘ee as in bee’, ‘ea as in tea’, ‘e-e as in theme’ and ‘e as in we’. They also learn when to apply simple spelling rules and use verbs in the correct tense.
We ensure that our teaching of phonics is rigorous, structured and enjoyable. In Reception to Year 2, children have discrete, daily phonics sessions where they are introduced to new phonemes, explore, practise and revise previous learning and have plenty of opportunities to apply the knowledge they have.
Our approach to teaching phonics begins in Nursery and continues through the Foundation Stage and into Key Stage One. Any children who have not reached the required standard by the end of Key Stage One will continue with a personalised phonics intervention programme in Key Stage Two. It is important to be consistent in the teaching of phonics, so throughout school we have adopted a validated, systematic synthetic phonics programme linked to our core reading scheme.
Children are exposed to the phases of phonics that are appropriate for their age, any children who experience difficulty in retaining what they have been taught are helped with intervention in small groups.
During your child’s time in school, you will be offered the opportunity to attend workshops which help you to understand the way we teach phonics in school and how children are tested at Year 1. You can help at home by practicing the sounds with your child. Click here to view a helpful video which will support you with the pronunciation of sounds. Once your child has learned the sounds that are made by letters and groups of letters, they are then taught to blend the sounds to read words. Blending means to say the individual sounds that make up the word and put them together to hear the whole word. Click here to see how you can help support your child with blending.
