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.
We use Floppy’s Phonics to teach phonics. This is a rigorous, content-rich systematic synthetic phonics programme that fully supports early reading and writing. It includes the characters: Floppy the dog, Biff, Chip and Kipper and their family and friends. The programme fully engages our children in their phonics journey. We start the program in EYFS and teach daily lessons to develop each child so they are able to read with fluency and develop a love of reading. During lessons children use online interactive resources, workbooks and reading books.
The Floppy’s Phonics programme teaches the letter-sound correspondences of the English alphabetic code explicitly and comprehensively for reading and spelling.
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.
Floppy Phonics Teaching Progression Chart
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, hence adopting a validated, systematic synthetic phonics programme that lings directly to our core reading scheme, Oxford Reading Tree.
Children are exposed to the phases of phonics that are appropriate for their stage, any children who experience difficulty in retaining what they have been taught are helped with intervention in small groups.
How parents and carers can support Early Reading
During your child’s time in school, you will be offered the opportunity to attend several workshops which will support 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.
Your child will bring a reading folder home each day. The reading books are very carefully chosen to match the sounds that your child has recently learnt. It is really important for your child to read these books more than once to develop their fluency and confidence in reading. They will also have a sound mat and a helpful word list to practise. The children must learn to enunciate each sound correctly so they can identify them in words.
Terminology
Teachers will use the correct terminology during phonics lessons with the children. Here is a list of terms that your child will be referring to.
| Phoneme | A single sound that can be made by one or more letters – e.g. s, k, z, oo, ph, igh |
| Blend | Blending involves merging the sounds in a word together in order to pronounce it. For eg j-a-m blended together reads jam. |
| Segment | The opposite of blending as it means splitting a word up into individual sounds when spelling and writing. The children count the sounds at they segment them on their fingers. |
| CVC | CVC Words: this is an abbreviation used for consonant-vowel-consonant words. It describes the order of sounds. Examples are; cat, dog, kit Other similar abbreviations include: VC (Vowel Consonant) e.g on it is CCVC (Consonant, Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) e.g trap, black. CVCC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant, Consonant) e.g. milk and fast. |
| Digraph | two letters which together make one sound e.g. ee, oa, ea, ch, ay.There are different types of digraph:Vowel digraph: a digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel: boat or day.Consonant digraph: two consonants which can go together: shop or thin.Split digraph (previously called magic e): two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word e.g. a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e. For example cake or pine. |
| Trigraph | three letters go together to make one sound e.g. ear, air, igh, dge, tch. |
| Grapheme | written letter or a group of letters which represent one single sound (phoneme) e.g. a, l, sh, air, ck. |
| Helpful words (previously called tricky words) | words that are difficult to sound out e.g. said, the, because which don’t follow phonics rules |
Phonics Screening Check
At the end of year 1, all children in England and Wales, sit a phonics screening to check their understanding and knowledge of phonics. To help prepare them for this you need to practise any sounds sent home and continue daily reading. We practise these checks with the children in school so they are familiar with the content and process. Please see below some useful websites to support practise for the phonics screening check.
We introduced Floppy Phonics in 2022 here are our results:
| Y1 Phonics | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
| 87% | 87% | 93% | 100% |
Phonics screening check (Year 1) – Oxford Owl
Guidance-for-Parents-The-Phonics-Screening-Check.pdf (fft.org.uk)
Phonics Information Meeting – Presentation to Parents