Intent

At Evercreech Church of England Primary School, we strive to equip our learners with a secure phonic knowledge that enables them to be confident, fluent and enthusiastic readers by the end of Key Stage One; we want all of our learners to love reading as much as we do!

We strongly believe that following a systematic, structured and rigorous phonics programme is fundamental to realising our intent, and aim to reduce the cognitive load on our learners by embedding a consistent approach to facilitate optimum learning and progress. 

Phonics is the key through which we unlock doors to the rest of the curriculum for our learners; our ultimate aim is for children to see themselves as readers and writers which will have a huge impact on their self-esteem and future life experiences.

“It is important early in life to acquire the power of reading sense wherever you happen to be.”

C.S. Lewis

“Reading is the one ability, that once set in motion, has the ability to feed itself, grow exponentially and provide a basis from which possibilities are limitless.”

Michael Morpurgo

   

 

Unlocking Letters and Sounds

We use Unlocking Letters and Sounds, a systematic synthetic phonics programme validated by the DfE, to support and develop our pupils to read, write and spell fluently and quickly. The programme is multi -sensory, using actions, images and patters to help embed learning. Unlocking Letters and Sounds is carefully structured to ensure learning is pacey and progressive, with sufficient opportunities for consolidation to facilitate mastery in phonics learning. All staff are trained in the programme to achieve fidelity in phonics throughout our school. 

We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of the Autumn term in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented; these are organised into different phases and in Reception they progress through Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. They also learn ‘Common Exception’ words within each of these phases. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.

                                                  

In Year 1, children progress through Phase 5; this is divided into Phases 5a, 5b and 5c and focuses on the learning of alternative spellings and pronunciations for graphemes and additional Common Exception Words. By the end of Year 1, children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling. In Year 1 all children are screened using the national Phonics Screening Check.

     

 

In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive support to close identified gaps. For further details please see the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression:

To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to keep up through bespoke 1-1 interventions. These include grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) recognition and blending and segmenting interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have an impact.

Our decodable reading books, Ransom Reading Stars, are fully aligned to our phonics programme so that books sent home are precisely matched to each individual learner's phonic attainment.

Pronunciation and Action Guides

The following videos illustrate the 'pure sound' pronunciation of each Phase 2 and 3 phoneme, plus their accompanying action. 

 

With thanks to St. Peter's Church of England Primary School, Portishead, for sharing these videos - lead school in the Unlocking Excellence English Hub and developer of Unlocking Letters of Sounds.