Implementation

At St Maria Goretti, phonics is taught daily to all children in the Early Years, Year 1 and Year 2 as appropriate. In Nursery, we use Letters and Sounds where children begin to learn the seven aspects of Phase 1. These aspects concentrate on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in phase 2.

Seven aspects of Phase 1

Aspect 1 - General sound discrimination  - environmental sounds

Aspect 2 - General sound discrimination - instrumental sounds

Aspect 3 - General sound discrimination - body percussion

Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme

Aspect 5 - Alliteration

Aspect 6 - Voice sounds

Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting 

In Reception and KS1, we follow the Red, Rose Letters and Sounds systematic synthetic phonics programme. The intent behind Red Rose Letters and Sounds is to provide a rigorous and thorough planning programme which strengthens the teaching and learning of phonics, and ensures children become enthusiastic and successful readers and writers. Through these interactive and fun phonics sessions where staff use games, songs and actions, we aim to build on the children’s speaking and listening skills as well as preparing them for learning to read by developing and using their phonic knowledge. We use the phonics tracker to regularly assess the children and identify those children who need any interventions putting in place. 

By the end of Reception, children are expected to at least know all Phase Three sounds. By the end of Year One all children are expected to know all Phase Five sounds. When finishing Key Stage One, most children are secure in Phase Six sounds. This phase moves away from learning sounds and focuses on spelling rules and patterns.

Phonics Phases 

Phase 1

Supports the importance of speaking and listening and develops children’s discrimination of sounds, including letter sounds.

Phase 2

The children learn to pronounce the sounds themselves in response to letters, before blending them. This leads to them being able to read simple words and captions.

Letters: s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

Tricky Words: the, to, I, no, go, into

Phase 3

Completes the teaching of the alphabet and moves on to sounds represented by more than one letter. The children will learn letter names and how to read and spell some tricky words.

Letters: j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

Tricky Words: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, they, her, all, are

Phase 4

The children learn to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants. However, Phase 4 adjacent consonants are including within Phase 2 and 3 words for reading and writing.  

Tricky Words: said, so, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, do, when, out, what

Phase 5

The children broaden their knowledge of sounds for use in reading and spelling. They will begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.

Sounds: /ee/ ea e e-e y ie ey /oo/ o ue u-e ew ui /ai/ ay a-e eigh ey /igh/ ie y i-e i /oa/ o ow o-e oe /ow/ ou ough /oi/ oy /ar/ a /or/ au aw a our augh ough /oo/ ou u /ur/ or ir er ear /ear/ eer ere /air/ ere ear are /w/ wh /f/ ph /n/ kn gn /r/ wr /s/ soft c /ch/ tch /sh/ ti, ch, s, soft c /m/ mb /j/ dge /zh/ (e.g. treasure)

Our phonics teaching is supported by a variety of fully decodable books including Little Blenders, Beanstalk books, ORT Word Sparks, Dandelion Readers and Phonics Bug Books. The children take them home to support the sounds that they have learnt in their phonics lessons. These are a great way for children to apply their phonics to their own reading at home. Once children are secure at Phonics, they will also be provided with a reading  book linked to their book band reading stage.  These reading books do not necessarily match with the phonics phase the children are currently on but are to develop a joy of reading with support from an adult at home. Children in Reception also learn a weekly poem using rhythm and rhyme from Poetry Basket which they practice and perform in class. 

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check

All children in Year 1 complete the Phonics Screening Check in June.  Should children not make the standard in Year 1 they retake the Phonics Screening check in Year 2. In 2023, the Phonics Screening check for Year 1 children and those Year 2 children needing to redo the check, will take place the week beginning Monday 12th June. 

Please ensure that your child is in school this week.

For more information about phonics and how you can help your child at home, please click on the links below. 

For more support with helping your child with phonics, Reception and Year 1 class teachers hold a parent's workshop early in the Autumn term. Beech and Maple class pages also contain videos to support you with reading and phonics at home.