Phonics Teaching at Woodchurch CE Primary School

At Woodchurch CE Primary School, our children learn to read and write effectively using the Phonics Shed systematic synthetic phonic programme.

Phonics Shed

• Phonics Shed is for use between Foundation stage 1 and Year 2 and for interventions in year 3 and 4.
• The scheme is split into four chapters; Chapters 1 to 3 for Foundation 1 (nursery) and Foundation 2; and Chapter 4 parts a, b and c for Year 1 and 2.
• Each Phonics Shed session is expected to last for 30 minutes.
• The scheme develops a love for reading through its careful use of characters for each sound and its use of puppet Joe as he welcomes the children into his Phonic Shed house.
• We sing songs as the sessions start and to reinforce phonemes taught and teaching books are used as a means to identify phonemes within words.
• The scheme enables children to become fluent readers and writers, providing strategies to decode words by teaching the links between letters and the sounds they can make.
• Phonics Shed uses the blending and segmenting approach to teach children to decode words.
• Children are taught to read by blending sounds together to make words by using the ‘Sound It, Squash It, Say It’ technique.
• Then the reverse is taught for spelling: to segment words into sounds, they are taught to ‘Say It, Stretch It, Sound It’.

As the children work through the scheme, they are also exposed to carefully chosen, decodable pseudo or ‘alien’ words in preparation for the Phonics Screening Check at the end of year one.

Inclusion of these words is limited, enabling children to understand the concept of ‘alien’ words while still allowing them to be effectively assessed during the Phonics Screening Check.

Our Phonic Shed programme allows children 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

The link to reading:

Learning to read is complex, yet essential, for all our children’s life chances. Reading relies on us learning many different cues such as:

• Structure– how sentences are formed, grammar & syntax;
• Meaning– it relies on us having an understanding of the world around us to make meaning (semantic cues);
• Pictorial– we need to know about illustrations, graphs, pictures, captions and headings (bibliographic cues) and
• Graphophonic cues– those supplied by spelling and presentation of words, which interact with knowledge of words and phonic analysis.

In Foundation stage 2 we start learning our initial sounds using a range of kinaesthetic approaches from singing songs to remember, having actions for every sound, having characters for every sound and reading books containing these sounds.  The pupils rapidly learn sounds and the letter or groups of letters they need to represent them.  Simple mnemonics help them to grasp this quickly.  This is especially useful for pupils at risk of making slower progress.  This learning is consolidated daily.

Pupils have frequent practice in reading high frequency words with irregular spellings – common exception words within phonic sessions and also classroom displays.  We make sure that pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and the common exception words.  This is so that, early on, they experience success and gain confidence as a reader.  Re-reading and discussing these books with the teacher supports their increasingly fluent decoding.

Phonic Shed provides a range of fully decodable texts which run alongside the teaching of phonics. These are character based narratives which are engaging and encourage comprehension understanding alongside the ability to decode. We believe that engendering a love of reading is of utmost importance hence why we have ensured there are enough books within school for the children to be reading books matched to their current abilities. We have also invested in a range of ‘Big Cat’ phonic books which complement the Phonic Shed books and allow children to choose texts which interest them.

The vibrant colours and fun illustrations within both the Phonic Shed and Big Cat Phonics books allow children to explore the stories on their own by segmenting words into their sounds and blending them back together.

In addition, we teach pupils to work effectively with a partner when reading to explain and consolidate what they are learning. This provides the teacher with opportunities to assess learning and to pick up on difficulties, such as pupils’ poor articulation, or problems with blending or phonetic understanding.

Phonics groupings

We group pupils according to their progress in reading rather than their writing for phonics.  This is because it is known that pupils’ progress in writing will lag behind progress in reading, especially for those whose motor skills are less well developed. Regular assessment is built into tour he Phonic Shed planning structure and this is then used to inform interventions so that these can be completed in a timely manner.

Once the children are secure in their knowledge and understanding of all the phonemes within the phonetic alphabet the children will move seamlessly into Spelling Shed, this should typically be in the Spring term of Year 2. Spelling Shed initially starts as a revision of spelling families taught through phonics such as all the phonemes which make the ‘ai’ sound (ai/ a/ a-e/ ay/ ey/ ei/ eigh). At this point the Phonic Shed intervention program will be used for those children who are not yet secure in their phonetic understanding in years 3 and 4. This is delivered by a fully trained Teaching Assistant. Spelling Shed which builds upon Phonics Shed will continue through to Year Six securing every child’s understanding in phonics for reading and writing.