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Christ Church CE Primary School
'Let your light shine' Matthew 5:16
Phonics
Unlocking Letters and Sounds
Phonics Statement of Intent
At Christ Church Primary School, we use the Unlocking Letters and Sounds systematic, synthetic phonics programme to teach with rigour and fidelity. We teach our phonics, so that it is accessible to all, by planning for 100% engagement from each child. Synthetic systematic phonics is a key skill that supports the development of 'learning to read'.
Phonics Statement of Implementation
We are proud to use Unlocking Letters and Sounds. Unlocking Letters and Sounds was validated by the DfE in December 2021.
We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 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, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.
In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, the children learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the 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. This screening check takes place in June and a workshop will take place prior to it for more information.
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. Children will move to our school spelling scheme throughout Year 2.
Children are regularly assessed on their GPC's and CEW. If needed, children are supported to keep up through daily 1-1 interventions. These include GPC recognition and blending and segmenting interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have impact.
Reading Scheme
Children need to have many opportunities to practise and apply their phonics skills. We use the Ransom Reading Stars reading scheme, which links with the Unlocking Letters and Sounds phonics scheme. This allows the children to practise newly taught graphemes, alongside their phonics lessons. The books are used for 1:1 reading in school and at home. All the books are fully decodable and banded by phonics phase, enabling us to match each child to a suitable text, which will challenge but not overwhelm them. The scheme offers a broad range of texts, both fiction and non-fiction, with engaging illustrations and real-life photographs. Consequently, our children are motivated to apply their phonics as they engage with high-quality texts.
As well as 1:1 reading books, we also use the Unlocking Letters and Sounds guided reading sets from Reception to Year Two. These are designed to be read more than once to help equally focus on decoding skills, fluency, prosody and comprehension. Each set comes with a carefully designed plan to help teachers deliver this successfully.
Once children progress beyond decodable texts, they move onto our Accelerated Reader book scheme to continue to progress in their decoding, fluency and comprehension skills and become avid, expert readers.
Phonics Statement of Impact
Through the consistent, systematic and daily teaching of the Unlocking Letters and Sounds phonics scheme, most children become fluent, confident readers by the end of KS1. When the children sit their Phonics Screening Check in Year One, they can draw upon their secure understanding of the phoneme/grapheme correspondences to decode unfamiliar words and recognise many words on sight.
Our pedagogy principles of daily retrieval help our children to retain what they learn in phonics lessons and apply it to their reading and writing. Through the mastery of phonics, children move from 'learning to read' in KS1 to taking pleasure in 'reading to learn' in KS2.