Phonics at St. Paul's

What is Phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully. They are taught how to: -recognise the sounds (phonemes) that each individual letter (graphemes) makes; -identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make - such as ‘sh’ or ‘oo’; -blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word. Children can then use this knowledge to ‘de-code’ new words that they hear or see. This is the first important step in learning to read.

Why Phonics?

Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way, it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. It is particularly helpful for children aged 5 to7. Almost all children who receive good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and to read for enjoyment.

Our Phonics Scheme At St Paul's

We follow a complete systematic, synthetic phonics programme called First Class Phonics from BC Education Ltd. The scheme is fully planned and resourced and allows children to receive consistent phonics teaching from Reception onwards. Phonics is taught daily from Reception to Year Two, and also as part of interventions for other children who may need some extra support. If you would like further information about the scheme, follow this link: https://bced.co.uk/first-class-phonics/

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The structure of Phonics

Most phonics schemes are designed to deliver the graphemes in a systematic way, beginning with the easiest GPCs and moving onto more difficult graphemes. These are grouped into Phases. Phase 1 primarily focuses on speaking and listening, which is taught explicitly in Nursery but runs through the entire phonics programme.

Phase	Year Group Taught	Graphemes Taught
2	Reception	c, a, t, s, n, i, p, m, d, o, g, k, e, ck, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, s, ss
3	Reception	j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ng, sh, ar, ch, ee, oo, th, or, oi, igh, ai, ow, oa, ur, ear
4	Year 1	Revisit all previous graphemes. New structures of words taught.
5	Year 1/Year2	ay, ea, ie, i-e, oe, o-e, a-e, e-e, ue (oo and yew), u-e (oo and yew), aw, au, ir, er, oy, ou, wh, ph, ew (oo and yew), g (soft), c (soft), ow and ou (oo), ie (ee), ch (k/sh), i (igh), ea (e), o (oe), e (ee)

Terminology

Vocabulary	Meaning
Phoneme	a sound
Grapheme	The written representation of a phoneme
Digraph	Two written letters that make one sound e.g. sh
Trigraph	Three written letters that make one sound e.g. igh
Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence (GPC)	The ability to say the sound which is represented by a letter or groups of letters.
Decode	The art of reading a word or sentence by segmenting the word into phonemes and then blending the phonemes together.
CVC words	Consonant-vowel-consonant words e.g. sat, pin, top etc.

Reading Books

Children in Reception, Year 1 and some Year 2 pupils will soon be bringing home two reading books.

One book is their usual reading book. This book is designed to be a ‘Read with me’ book. You can read this book together, and your child is not expected to be able to read every word independently. This is clearly labelled on the book.

The other book is a phonetically decodable book which is perfectly aligned to the phonics knowledge your child has been taught. Please bear in mind, old colour bands are no longer applicable, and may not match with the colour band your child is reading in their ‘Read with me’ book.

Read with me books will be changed as normal in your child’s class. Your child’s phonics book will be changed weekly, to consolidate learning and allow children to succeed and feel confident with their reading.

Your child will also have a plastic wallet to keep their reading book(s) in which needs to come into school daily, regardless of whether they have read their book or not.

The wallet will contain a cover sheet explaining the difference between the books and tips on how to support your child’s reading.

It may also include some extra resources such as grapheme cards, tricky words or sound mats.