Phonics

Phonics at St John’s Primary School

At St John’s we aim for all of our children to become fluent confident readers who develop a passion for reading. We believe that children who read regularly develop the tools to become independent,

life-long learners.

In order to achieve this we base our direct teaching of phonics on the nationally recognised

Phonics Scheme called Read, Write, Inc. (RWI).

Through daily-dedicated phonics lessons, we teach children to:

Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts and mnemonics.
Learn to read words using Fred Talk and sound blending.
Learn to write the 44 sounds and use these to spell words using Fred Talk.
Read from a range of engaging and high quality storybooks and non-fiction books matched with their phonics knowledge.
Work well with partners.
Develop comprehension skills by answering ‘Find it’ and ‘Prove it’ discussion questions.

Within phonics lessons children are taught in ability groups across the school resulting in high quality teaching and learning of phonics being delivered. This allows each child to make progress from their own starting point. Children are assessed and groups reviewed every 6 weeks.

We embed our use of Phonics knowledge across the curriculum.

Our Reading Leader is Mrs Wilks, please contact her via the school office if you have any questions regarding how phonics is taught in school.

Year One Screening Check

In the summer term all children in Year One are required by the Department for Education to undertake a simple phonics assessment. This is a short assessment to determine whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. Pupils that do not pass the phonic screening check will receive extra support and will be retested at the end of Year Two.

Due to Covid restrictions the Year One Phonics Screening Check was not carried out with the current Year Two pupils. Therefore this will take place in December 2021.

For further information please follow the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbKGLJPp6ww

The children will take home at least one phonetically decodable reading book per week, which is closely matched to their reading level. They may also take home a paper copy of the RWI reading book that they have been reading in school for further practice and consolidation.

At St John’s we follow a 3 step approach to reading which helps children to decode new words, read with fluency and understand what they have read. Please see the document below for more information on how this can be followed at home.