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.

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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 read phonetically decodable books that are matched to their current learning in phonics.

Children will read 2 books per week from a set that they learnt in phonics 2 weeks prior. This is to ensure knowledge is embedded and that they can confidently decode the majority of the book.

The purpose of only 2 books per week is to provide opportunities for children to ‘over-read’ the text and develop fluency.