Phonics is a key area of the Early Years and Key Stage 1 curriculum at Salford Priors CofE Academy. We firmly believe that the teaching of high-quality phonics underpins the core skills of both reading and writing.  

Phonics is taught in small groups through a structured, fun, interactive programme which follows the progression of “Little Wandle”. Children are taught how to segment and blend words for both reading and writing. From an early age, children use the correct terminology such as phoneme, grapheme, digraph, split digraph.  

Please follow this link to the 'Little Wandle' website which gives more information and support for parents. This includes videos on how to pronounce the sounds your child will be learning. 

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Reception children receive daily key sessions of Phase 2 phonics as soon as they enter the year and start on phase 3 letters and sounds after Christmas (e.g. digraphs such as oa, oo, ea ). Children in Year 1 work on Phase 4 and 5 letters and sounds. Year 2 pupils focus on consolidating knowledge of blends and clusters and revising phase 5 sounds. They also recap on learning alternative spellings for each phoneme and learning the spellings of common exception words. 

Some children in Key Stage 2, who for various reasons might not have passed the Phonics Screening Test taken by all pupils in Year 1, might need to receive continued targeted phonics support to help them with both their reading and writing. 

Information sessions are held at the beginning of Autumn Term, and again throughout the school year where necessary, for parents/carers of Reception children to show how we teach phonics and to demonstrate how children can be supported at home with their learning of phonics. 

Year 1 children take a national phonics screening check at the end of the academic year to assess if they have reached the required standard in phonics. Children who do not pass the test will receive extra phonics support in Year 2 and resit the check at the end of the year. Occasionally, this support might need to continue into KS2 until they are secure with their phonics knowledge and application.

In Reception, we start off with wordless books. Children then moving to books with words after they are secure with some phase 2 sounds and are able to segment and blend words with previously taught sounds in them. Children in Reception and KS1 take part in 3 group reads a week focusing on 'decoding', 'prosody' and 'comprehension'. The books that children read are matched to their phonics ability and are all fully decodable. The children then take this reading book home to share with parents/carers. Children also choose a 'library book' each week to take home for parents/carers to read to them in order to encourage reading for pleasure and to help develop children's vocabulary. 

All year groups follow the Twinkl Handwriting Scheme and encourage children to use the letter patterns to help them with their letter writing. 

Should you require any further information on Phonics, please contact: Mrs Kavanagh