Phonics
What is Phonics?
The first question many parents ask is what is phonics? The short video below explains what phonics is and why we teach children to read in this way.
What Phonics system does Oldbury on Severn School use?
At Oldbury on Severn Primary School, we teach phonics using the Unlocking Letters and Sounds programme. The children’s phonics journey starts from the moment the join our school in September, where they experience a wealth of listening activities and continues throughout their school years.
How do we teach phonics in a mixed age class?
The class teacher delivers all phonics lessons. We do this though our ability to flexibly timetable our days. Through careful timetabling and use of our wider teaching team we are able to have the class teacher deliver each session and they are supported by the class teaching assistant.
Our fully trained teaching assistants deliver 1-1 to sessions to help children keep up if they are falling behind in phonics or if they just need a little more time to consolidate a new sound.
What do the children learn and by when?
In Reception, phonics starts in the first few weeks. The 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 of Unlocking Letters and Sounds.
In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, they 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.
In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery and any child who does not meet age related expectations in Year 1 will continue to receive support to close identified gaps.
To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to catch up through bespoke 1-1 precision teaching, and segmenting and blending interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have impact.
You can find out more details by downloading the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression document – Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression
Does the school have reading books to match Unlocking Letters and Sounds?
Yes our reading books and KS1 guided reading books are fully matched to our ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ phonics system. We have a new full new reading scheme which has been created by Ransom Publishing that ensures we have a full range of decodable books that match the progression of Unlocking Letters and Sounds. The Ransom Reading Stars readers covers Phase 1 (books without words) right through to Phase 5 and are carefully structured to introduce new letters and sounds on a week-by-week basis, as soon as they are introduced in Unlocking Letters and Sounds.
Are staff trained to teach phonics?
Whole-school training is essential to ensure that all members of staff understand the way phonics is delivered at Oldbury School.
We also ensure ongoing Phonics CPD. This includes:
- whole-school training
- Support from the English Hub
- termly partnership meeting with our partner school to look at the teaching and learning of phonics and to work on coaching and modelling between schools.
- All new staff are given initial phonics training upon joining our school. This includes any university students who are joining our teaching team for their university teaching placements.
- Training for TA’s to deliver dedicated interventions for the lowest 20%
How can I learn more about phonics so that I can help at home?
A good starting point is by watching and listening to the embedded video. This video helps identify the pure sounds we need to make in phonics (It might be tricky at first but once you get used to it you will see the impact you can have when helping your child read at home!)
You can also find out more online: https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/phonics/
