Phonics
The teaching and learning of Phonics is a crucial part of the day for our children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Phonics gives the children the tools they need to be able to read and write successfully. Being able to read and write independently allows children to access the world around them and helps them to reach their own individual potentials.
As we value the importance of quality phonics teaching and learning we make this a priority in our school day. Each child has a 30-40 minute phonics lesson per day. This incorporates some extra reading to try and boost fluency.
Phonics is taught by class teachers and assisted by experienced support staff.
Our phonics scheme is called
Rocket Phonics.
This systematic synthetic phonics programme teaches children to recognise letters (graphemes) and their associated sounds (phonemes)
The scheme ensures consistency of approach and of resources to eliminate potential barriers to learning. It also works on a keep up not catch up approach to ensure all children make good progress in this critical area. Children work together as a class with the class teacher using electronic big books and flashcards. Children are assisted where necessary; including those with SEN and any children who may have struggled with the same phoneme the previous day. The scheme includes opportunities to extend and challenge the more able learners within the main lesson.
Individual work is then completed in pupil workbooks every lesson.
The workbooks follow a specific structure of initially a segmenting then a blending lesson. Additional focus time or interventions in an afternoon are used to help children who need further support following the morning's lesson to reinforce new learning or any prior knowledge and gaps in learning missed.
New home school reading books to match the new phonics scheme have also been purchased to run alongside phonics teaching. The new books promote independent and more fluent reading as they are written to include only GPCs that the children will have learnt in their lessons. Children and parents are now very much encouraged to re-read books to develop a fluent style, making sure that the focus sounds for the reading books are embedded before moving on.
Children’s progress through the phonics phases is tracked and monitored by teachers. Every year our year 1 children sit the national test for phonics The Phonics Screening Check. This test assesses a child’s ability to decode words.
Parents are kept up to date with phonics progress on weekly newsletters in Reception. Parents are also invited to a meeting to discuss phonics and the reading scheme at the beginning of the school year. Phonics progress is discussed with parents at our twice yearly parents evenings.
Phonics lessons are planned using the Rocket Phonics scheme.
Other Phonics resources that can be accessed at home can be found on
This is what some of the children said about their phonics lessons and reading...
Izzy, Reception - "I like reading and writing."
Brooklyn, Reception - "I like reading books about monsters."
Corban, Reception - "I like writing the letters."
Xin, Reception - "Miss Cross showed me the tricky words."
Charlotte, Year 1 - "I like doing the flashcards."
Dylan, Year 1 - "I like writing in the booklet."
Mila, Year 1 - "I like writing sentences."
Ezra, Year 2 - "I'm good at writing the words in the book."
Izzy, Year 2 - "I like the bit where we read the passage."
Tommy, Year 2 - "I enjoy writing sentences in the booklet."
Take a look at some of our Infant children enjoying their phonics lessons during the 'Phonics Walk'... completed in September 2024
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