Download Foley Infant School - St Andrew`s CE Primary School

St.Andrew’s CE Primary School
Phonics Policy
Introduction
This policy outlines the organisation, management and teaching of phonics
at St. Andrew’s CE Primary School. As a direct result of the Rose Review
(2006) into the teaching of early reading and the New Literacy
Framework all schools are required to deliver a programme of ‘high quality
phonics work’. All the principles which underpin the recommendations of
the Rose Review have been incorporated into the revised Primary
Framework for Literacy.
What is Phonics?
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This is the knowledge of how the alphabetic sounds works and how
these sounds are combined to correspond to the spoken word.
Phonemes are the sounds which are made by blending letters to
correspond to the spoken word.
Graphemes are the written equivalent of phonemes.
Aims
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To present high quality, systematic phonic work as defined by the
Rose Report and incorporated in the New Literacy Framework.
To enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills by
the age of four, with the expectation that they will become fluent
readers, having secured word building and recognition skills, by the
end of Key Stage One
To ensure that the children apply phonic knowledge as their first
approach to reading and spelling, even though all words do not
conform to regular phonic patterns.
To ensure that the children are taught high frequency words that
do not conform to regular phonic patterns.
To ensure that children have opportunities to read texts and words
that are within their phonic capabilities as early as possible, even
though all words may not be entirely de-codable by the children
unaided.
To encourage the children to attempt to spell words for
themselves, within the range of their phonic knowledge, by building
an individual repertoire and the confidence and strategies to
attempt the unfamiliar.
To help the children to apply the skill of blending phonemes in
order to read words.
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To help the children to segment words into their constituent
phonemes in order to spell words.
To learn that the blending and segmenting of words are reversible
processes.
To teach the children that phonemes should be blended from left
to right through the complete word, in order for it to be read.
Delivery of Phonics
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The teaching of phonics follows the Letters and Sounds scheme
and the LCP planning scheme is available on the server.
Initial sounds are to be taught in a specific order.
Sounds taught should be ‘pure’ ie ‘b’, not ‘buh’ as this is central
to phonic teaching and ability to recognise sounds in words.
Blends are to be declustered. eg bl is two specific sounds.
Children are to be taught that the number of graphemes in a
word always corresponds to the number of phonemes. This
greatly aids spelling.
Set 2 sounds are to be taught after Set 1 (initial sounds)
Letter names are to be introduced with Set 3.
All lessons follow the same pattern – revisit, teach, practise,
apply.
Revisit – High frequency words or previously taught gpcs
Teach – New sound or high frequency words
Practise – Practise the new sound/words
Apply – reading or writing sentences linked to the taught part of
the session. This can be done in either the Phonic or Literacy
lesson.
Organisation
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On entry to Reception, children are assessed as to their phonic
knowledge.
Where possible, children are taught in ability groups.
Phonic work will be taught outside the daily Literacy lessons.
Multi-sensory activities will be included in the teaching of phonics
so that various teaching styles can be encompassed.
Reading and spelling will begin with CVC words and progress to
vowel sounds.
ICT opportunities are used where appropriate.
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Resources.
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Letters and Sounds is compatible with most of the present reading
schemes used in school i.e. Jelly and Bean, Floppy Phonics. When
the children gain in phonic proficiency and confidence they will be
able to read the less compatible schemes.
Resources for Key Stage One are located in the group room and
individual classrooms.
Electronic resources are also saved on the server in the Letters
and Sounds folder.
Assessment.
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Assessment should be carried out regularly, each half-term, using
the assessment proforma in the folder on the server.
As a result of assessments, children are enabled to progress at
their own pace and according to their own needs. Grouping is
flexible and children can be moved groups to match their needs.
These assessments are also used to inform the phonics assessment
tracker.
Inclusion
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Teachers aim to include all pupils fully in their daily phonic lessons.
All children benefit from participating in watching, and listening to,
other children demonstrating and explaining their ideas.
Equal Opportunities
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All children have an entitlement to access reading and spelling
strategies at an appropriate level and are helped to do this.
First Version: December 2010
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Letters and Sounds
Phase 1
(This phase starts in nursery and continues throughout all phases 2-6):
Working on: Showing awareness of rhyme and alliteration, distinguishing
between different sounds in the environment and phonemes, exploring and
experimenting with sounds and words and discriminating speech sounds in
words. Beginning to orally blend and segment phonemes. NB: NO letter
sounds are taught at this stage. Children need to develop their listening skills
to distinguish between environmental and other sounds.
Phase 2
(Up to 6 weeks. This phase starts in Reception):
Overview
Working on: Using common consonants and vowels.
Blending for reading and segmenting for spelling simple CVC (Consonant –
Vowel – Consonant) words e.g. c-a-t.
Working on: Knowing that words are constructed from phonemes (sounds)
and that phonemes are represented by graphemes (written letters).
Letter progression:
Set
Set
Set
Set
Set
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
s, a, t, p
i, n, m, d
g, o, c, k
ck (clock), e, u, r
h, b, f, ff (huff), l, ll (full),
Phase 3
(Up to 12 weeks):
Overview
Children working within this phase will be working on knowing one grapheme
for each of the 43 phonemes
Working on: Reading and spelling CVC words using letters and short vowels.
Letter progression:
Set 6: j, v, w, x
Set 7: y, z, zz (fizz), qu (quiz)
Working on: Reading and spelling CVC words using a wider range of letters,
short vowels, some consonant digraphs and double letters.
Consonant digraphs (Sounds made up of 2 letters, the first being a
consonant) ch (chip), sh (shop), th (that), ng (sing)... of these sets are
taught over the course of a week.
Working on: Reading and spelling a wide range of CVC words using all letters
from phase 2 and less frequent consonant digraphs and some long vowel
phonemes. Graphemes: ear (hear) , air (fair), ure (pure), er (hammer), ar
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(car), or (torn), ur (turn), ow (cow), oi (coin), ai (train), ee (sheep), igh (night),
oa (boat), oo (boot/look)
Phase 4
(4 to 6 weeks):
Overview
No new phonemes or graphemes are introduced in this phase. Children
consolidate their knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words
containing adjacent consonants (e.g. went: w-e-n-t) and polysyllabic words
(words with more than one syllable).
Working on: Blending adjacent consonants in words and applying this skill
when reading unfamiliar texts.
Working on: Segmenting adjacent consonants in words and apply this in
spelling.
Phase 5
(Approximately 1 year. A child making expected progress will be working
on this phase during Year 1):
Overview
Children will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in
reading and spelling. They will new graphemes and alternative pronunciations
for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant.
Working on: Reading phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable
words.
Working on: Using alternative ways of pronouncing and spelling the
graphemes corresponding to the long vowel phonemes.
New graphemes for reading: ay (day) oy (boy) wh (when) a-e (make) ou (out)
ir (girl) ph (photo) e-e (these) ie (tie) ue (blue) ew (new) i-e (like) ea (eat)
aw (saw) oe (toe) o-e (home) ey (honey) au (Paul) u-e (rule)
Known graphemes for reading: alternative pronunciations a: hat acorn fast*
was e: bed he i: tin find o: hot no u: but unit pull*
Known graphemes for reading: alternative pronunciations cont… ow: down low
ie: pie field ea: sea head er: fern farmer ou: out soup could mould y: yes my
gym happy ch: chin chef school c: cat cell g: got magic ey: they money *
In the North of England the grapheme a is pronounced the same as in hat,
fast etc. The grapheme u is pronounced the same in but, put etc. New
phoneme: zh (vision)
Working on: Spelling complex words using phonically plausible attempts.
Phase 6 (Approximately 1 year. A child making expected progress will be
working on this phase during Year 2):
Overview
During this phase children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate
spellers. To become successful readers, children must understand what they
read. They need to learn a range of comprehension strategies and should be
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encouraged to reflect upon what their learning.
Alternative pronunciations for each of these graphemes apply in the South
of England only.
Alternative spellings for each phoneme: /c/ (crisp): k ck qu x ch /ch/ (chip):
tch /f/ (fin): ph /j/ (jug): g dge /m/ (mug): mb /n/ (not): kn gn /ng/ (sing):
n(k) /r/ (red): wr /s/ (so): c sc /sh/ (shop): ch t(ion) ss(ion, ure) s(ion,ure)
c(ion,ious,ial) /v/ (vat): ve /w/ (walk): wh /e/ (pet): ea /i/ (hit): y /o/ (got):
(w)a /u/ (cup): o (south) /ai/ (train): ay a-e eigh ey ei /ee/ (sleep): ea e-e ie y
ey eo /igh/ (night): y ie i-e /oa/ (boat): ow oe o-e o /oo/ (boot): ew ue ui ou
/oo/ (book): u oul o (north) /ar/ (car): a (south) /or/ (torn): aw au al our /ur/
(turn): ir er ear /ow/ (cow): ou /oi/ (boil): oy /ear/ (hear): ere eer /air/
(hair): are ear /ure/ (pure): our /er/ (farmer): our e u
Over time, children need to develop self-regulated comprehension
strategies:
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Activating prior knowledge
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Clarifying meanings – with a focus on vocabulary work
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Generating questions, interrogating the text
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Constructing mental images during reading
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Summarising
Working on: Recognising phonic irregularities. and becoming more secure with
less common grapheme-phoneme correspondences
Working on: Applying phonic skills and knowledge to recognise and spell an
increasing number of complex words. Addition of suffixes: -s -es -ing -ed -er
-est -y -en -ful -ly -ment -ness -en
Letter Formation (St.Andrew’s Handwriting Policy, 2009)
Children in the early foundation stage will be developing the four basic
handwriting movements using gross and fine motor skills. They will be
learning through ‘sky writing’, paint, sand etc. as they associate sounds
with letter shapes.
From Reception onwards we will follow the Charles Cripps scheme, which
also reinforces spelling patterns. Letter formation should be taught from
Phase 2 onwards. Digraphs/trigraphs should be taught as joined up
patterns to help to reinforce the sound.
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Children should be taught that the letters of the alphabet fall into four
main groups, these are –
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Long ladder – down and off in another direction such as I, j, l, t u.
key letter l
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One- armed robots – down and retrace upwards such as b, h, k, m,
n, p, r. Key letter r
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Curly caterpillar – anticlockwise round such as c, a, d, e, g, o, q, f,
s . Key letter c
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Zigzags – v, w, x, y, z
Each letter should then be introduced in association with its key letter.
In effect children should then learn letters as movements rather than
visual shapes.
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Glossary of Terms:
CVC words: Words that consist of a consonant-vowel-consonant as in c-a-t
and b-i-g
Consonant digraph: A phoneme that is made up of two graphemes, the first
of which is a consonant as in ‘wh’ and ‘ng’
Digraphs and trigraphs (and four letter graphemes): A digraph is a two
letter grapheme where two letters represent one sound as ‘sh’ in ship. A
trigraph is a three letter grapheme where three letters represent one
phoneme as ‘igh’ in night. By definition, a four letter grapheme uses four
letters to represent one phoneme as ‘eigh’ representing the /ai/ phoneme in
eight and weight
Grapheme: A symbol of a phoneme, that is, a letter or group of letters
representing a sound. There is always the same number of graphemes in a
word as phonemes 6
Grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and phoneme-grapheme
correspondences: We convert graphemes to phonemes when we are reading
and phonemes to graphemes when we are spelling. To do this, children need
to learn which graphemes correspond to which phonemes and vice versa
Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in a word
Phonics: Consists of the knowledge of the skills of segmenting and blending,
knowledge of the alphabetic code and an understanding of the principles
underpinning the way the code is used in reading and spelling
Segmenting and blending: Segmenting and blending are reversible phonic
skills. Segmenting consists of breaking words down into their constituent
parts to spell. Blending consists of building words from their constituent
phonemes to read
Split digraphs: A split digraph has a letter that splits, i.e. comes between,
the two letters in the digraph as in make, where ‘k’ splits the digraph ‘ae’
which represents the phoneme /ai/
Vowel digraph: A phoneme that is made up of two graphemes, the first of
which is a vowel as in ‘ai’ and ‘oy’ (Letters & Sounds, DfES 2007)
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