Phonics
Intent
Here at Salehurst CE Primary, we teach daily phonics sessions from Reception to Year 2, with discrete sessions, tailored to individual needs, as children progress through the school. Children learn actions alongside the sounds to support their knowledge. We recognise the importance of Phonics to support children’s reading and writing skills.
Implementation
After investigating available validated Systematic Synthetic Phonics schemes, as recommended by the DfE, we have selected the Fisher Family Trust Success for All programme as a comprehensive and straight forward scheme, which enables teachers to communicate learning effectively to the children. We began staff training in Summer term 2022 ready to implement this year.
We use a range of resources in our sessions, both printed and online, together with websites and games to enhance learning. We aim to instill a love of reading and writing and feel this is achieved through active and engaging sessions, including clear reading, writing and spelling activities, which are delivered to our children. Children work through six phases, within differentiated phonics groupings when necessary, led by class teachers and teaching assistants. As children move through the phases, they learn the alternate spellings for each sound, for example ai / ay / a-e.
Impact
Our children’s enjoyment of phonics lessons is clear, leading to the success that is achieved by them. Our phonics results are consistently improving, with results higher than county and national average in the last validated assessments. The impact of our systematic and thorough teaching of phonics is seen in the children’s success and enthusiasm for reading and the application of their spelling and reading skills in all learning situations, as well as reading for pleasure at home and at school.
