Phonics

Intent

At Cravenwood Primary Academy, phonics supports us with fostering a love of reading and building our pupils' ability to read with confidence, fluency and expression.   

By the end of Key Stage One, pupils are taught to: 

  • Decode letter-sound correspondences quickly and effortlessly, using their phonic knowledge and skills  
  • Read common exception words on sight  
  • Understand what they read  
  • Read aloud with fluency and expression  
  • Write confidently, with a strong focus on vocabulary and grammar  
  • Spell quickly and easily by segmenting the sounds in words  
  • Acquire good handwriting. 

Implementation

All children in EYFS and Key Stage 1 learn Phonics through Read Write Inc. sessions, which take place daily. 

The programme focuses on teaching sounds and the letters that represent them. This skill is essential for children to read and spell words accurately.  

The Read Write Inc. programme is structured into three sets: 

  • Set One - mainly teaches single sounds to the children and the letters that represent them. Children then have numerous opportunities to apply this skill to reading and writing words containing the taught sound.  
  • Set Two - moves onto using more than one letter to represent long vowel sounds e.g.  'ay'. Children are still given numerous opportunities to read and write these taught sounds.  
  • Set Three- moves onto the teaching of alternative graphemes.  

Phonics teaching takes place across EYFS and KS1. It is delivered daily and pupils are grouped homogeneously, according to their progress through the programme. 

Pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and common exception words.  

Teachers read a wide range of stories, poetry and non-fiction to pupils; children are soon able to read these texts for themselves.  

Embedding the alphabetic code early on means that pupils quickly learn to write simple words and sentences.  

Our aim is for pupils to complete the phonics programme as quickly as possible and for all pupils to pass the Phonics screening test 

Impact

The compulsory 'Phonic Screening' test is for all children in Year 1 and any children who have previously missed the test or need to repeat it. The test is normally carried out at the start of June and you will be informed of the result at the end of year report.