We want our children to be fluent and confident readers with a love of books and reading.
At Chalfont St Giles Nursery and Infant School, we consider that it is vitally important that children have a secure understanding of the letter sounds and spelling system of English. Phonic skills need to be developed in a systematic, staged approach in order to help all children to ‘achieve their potential’. Teachers at Chalfont St Giles implement exciting and interactive phonic sessions which engage all children in this area of learning.
We will:
At Chalfont St Giles Infants we use Bug Club Phonics, which is one of the DfE’s approved phonics teaching programmes and aims to help all children in our school learn to read by the age of six in a fun and accessible way. Following its own proven progression, the whole school programme matches the National Curriculum. It uses well known characters from children’s television; interactive games and rewards to keep the children motivated.
Bug Club Phonics texts include fiction, comics and non-fiction. The Bug Club range includes plays and poetry. Both series are rich in vocabulary and help to develop language comprehension through engaging contexts, characters and storylines. eBooks are also allocated alongside school reading books where appropriate. Bug Club Phonics decodable readers match the order in which grapheme/phoneme correspondences are introduced in class, giving children the opportunity to practise their blending skills and to consolidate their knowledge. Each child is allocated the relevant eBook to match with the correct phonic phase. The eBooks are invaluable in helping pupils to practise reading at home as they include a phoneme pronunciation guide to aid pupils’ blending skills.
Lowest 20% of children will receive small group support in the form of a recap and phonics games.
During the summer term, Nursery will use the Bug Club phase 1 lessons for the cohort who will be moving to Reception in the next academic year. This will be delivered in line with Reception and KS1 resources. Children in nursery experience a wide range of Phase 1 activities to support their learning prior to the introduction of Bug Club during the summer term.
In KS2 children who need continued support with phonics receive this planned intervention using the same systematic approach and resources. They can also access texts which are at an appropriate level to their phonic knowledge.
In the summer term, Year 1 children will take a Phonics Screening Check in which children will be expected to read 40 decodable ‘words’. This progress check identifies those children not at the expected level in reading – and these children will be re-checked in Year 2.
Mastery for each phase is defined as follows but, please note, the programme does not expect all children to have mastery of a phase before the class moves on.
Children explore and experiment with sounds. They learn to differentiate between sounds and become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. (According to an individual child’s needs / Nursery)
The aim of this phase is to introduce grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondence. Children learn that words are constructed from phonemes and that phonemes are represented by graphemes. They develop a knowledge of a small selection of common consonants and vowels (beginning with s, a, t, p, i, n) and begin to put them together to read and spell CVC words. (Reception)
At this stage parents should be encouraging their children to play sound games and practice sounds at home i.e. I-Spy.
A child who has mastered Phase 2 can:
Children learn one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes in order to read and spell simple regular words. Children are taught to link sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet. They can hear and say sounds in the order they occur in the word and read simple words by blending the phonemes from left to right. They recognise common digraphs (e.g. th, sh, ch) and read some high frequency words. (Reception/Year 1) Children practise making CVC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) words i.e. cat and begin to make CCVC (i.e. ship) and CVCC (i.e. much) words.
At this stage parents should be encouraging their child to blend and segment words when they are playing games with words and /or reading.
A child who has mastered Phase 3 can:
This phase is for consolidation and application of sounds and skills learnt in Phase 3. The aim is to teach children to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants. Children will be able to blend and segment adjacent consonants in words and apply this skill when reading and spelling. Children progress on from CVC words (pot, sheep) to CVCC words (pots) and CCVC words (spot) and then CCVCC words (spots). (Reception/Year 1)
At this stage parents should be encouraging their child to blend and segment words when they are playing games with words and /or reading.
A child who has mastered Phase 4 can:
The children are now developing their knowledge and skills with vowel diagraphs (two vowels that when put together make a new sound) such as ai as in maid, ea as in bear and ir as in bird. They also work with split vowel diagraphs such as a-e as in fare.
During this phase children are taught to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the phonemes already taught. Children will learn to use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes (e.g. the ‘c’ in coat and city). They will recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically. Knowledge and skills of phonics will be the prime approach to reading and spelling. (End of Year 1/Year 2)
At this stage parents should be encouraging their child to blend and segment words when they are playing games with words and /or reading.
A child who has mastered Phase 5 can:
The aim of this phase is for children to develop their skills and automaticity in reading and spelling, creating ever increasing capacity to read for meaning. There is a focus on children understanding different grammatical concepts such as suffixes and prefixes.
They learn to apply their phonics knowledge to recognise and spell an increasing number of complex words. The children should be reading an increasing number of high and medium frequency words independently and automatically. (Year 2)
The children continue to be taught spelling and each year group is taught specific spelling rules and vocabulary to build their knowledge and experience further. This continues into Year 6 where the children are deepening their skills and knowledge ready for their next phase in education.
Word | Meaning |
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Blend | Saying the individual sounds that make up a word and then merging or blending the sounds together to say the word – used when reading.
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Consonant | Most letters of the alphabet (excluding the vowels: a,e,i,o,u)
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CVC Words | Abbreviation used for consonant-vowel-consonant words, used to describe the order of sounds. Some examples of CVC words are: cat, pen, top, chat (because ch makes one sound).
Other similar abbreviations include: • VC words e.g. on, is, it. • CCVC words e.g. trap and black. • CVCC words e.g. milk and fast.
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Diagraph | Two letters which together make one sound e.g. ee, oa, ea, ch, ay. There are different types of digraph: • Vowel digraph: a digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel, for example; boat or day. • Consonant digraph: two consonants which can go together, for example shop or thin. • Split digraph (previously called magic e): two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word e.g. a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e. For example, cake or pine.
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Grapheme | Written letters or a group of letters which represent one single sound (phoneme) e.g. a, l, sh, air, ck.
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Morpheme | A morpheme is the smallest linguistic part of a word that can have a meaning. Examples of morphemes would be the parts "un-", "break", and "-able" in the word "unbreakable".
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Phoneme | A single sound that can be made by one or more letters – e.g. s, k, z, oo, ph, igh.
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Phonics | Phonics teaches children to listen to and identify the sounds that make up words. This helps them to read and write words.
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Segment | This is the opposite of blending (see above). Splitting a word up into individual sounds – used when spelling and writing.
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Syllable | A syllable is a part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and that is pronounced as a unit. So, for example, ' book' has one syllable, and 'reading' has two syllables.
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Trigraph | Three letters which go together make one sound e.g. ear, air, igh, dge, tch
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Vowel | The letters a, e, i, o, u.
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