Curriculum Intent

We:

• expect all our children to make as much progress as possible;
• provide an environment where children can feel secure, be imaginative, are able to take risks and make mistakes, without damaging their self-esteem;
• encourage responsibility – enabling every child to become independent and ambitious;
• promote curiosity – fostering lively and enquiring minds to develop the ability to question and reason.

Phonics

At All Faiths Children’s Academy we want to foster a love of reading from the moment children start school. Being able to read well is a fundamental skill for accessing all areas of the curriculum and is an essential life skill which has far-reaching implications for lifelong learning and well-being. We aim to provide a solid foundation for reading from the start of EYFS through the delivery of rigorous and systematic phonics teaching. Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured systematic way – starting with the easiest sounds and progressing through to the most complex – it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. By the end of key stage one all children should be proficient in sounding and blending unfamiliar words they may encounter quickly and accurately. They should have the skills to become fluent readers and will have secured a solid platform from which they can develop their comprehension and fluency. Alongside their developing reading skills, children will learn to spell using their growing phonic knowledge. They will be taught to segment words into phonemes then taught how to represent these phonemes in words, giving them the freedom to express themselves in writing from an early age. Through good phonics teaching, we aim to provide the necessary tools to develop children’s knowledge and understanding of spelling, enabling them to move on to more complex spellings with confidence.

Implementation

Children begin phonics teaching as soon as they start school. They build on skills they have acquired in pre-school and at home, such as the ability to identify and make different sounds, rhyme and talk about sounds. During this time, the emphasis is on getting children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. They quickly move on to structured and systematic phonics teaching. Phonics is taught for 20-30 minutes each day and each lesson has a specific focus. We follow a progressive teaching sequence based on Little Wandle Letters and Sounds. Teaching is planned in phases, with EYFS covering, phases 2,3,4 and Year 1 consolidating this learning then moving on to phase 5. 

Children practise segmenting and blending words with a focus phoneme in single words and as part of captions and sentences. Children build on their phonics lessons by being given reading books that are phonetically decodable and matched to the children’s ability. They are given opportunities to apply their phonics skills in writing and have access to resources in the classroom which enable them to do this independently such as Flashcards, Wall Friezes and Grapheme Charts. Parents are provided with the necessary information to be able to support children’s phonics development at home. Once children no longer need to decode to read a text, they will move on to the Little Wandle Fluency books. These are levelled based on the child's reading speed. 

Impact

Children’s progress is closely monitored to ensure that all children are acquiring the skills they need to move on to their next phase of learning and become confident in reading and spelling. Lessons follow the ‘review - teach- practise –apply -assess’ process which gives teachers the opportunity to continually assess progress. Children are assessed at the end of phase 2,3,4 and during the middle and end of phase 5. Their ability to identify single sounds in isolation is assessed as well as their ability to segment and blend sounds in whole words for reading or spelling. If they are still struggling to decode and spell, they are given extra support to catch up. At the end of Year 1 children complete the phonics screening check and if they don’t meet the standard in Year one, they will be given extra support and assessed again in Year Two. In addition to this, children who have been identified with difficulties in reading and spelling are monitored closely by the SENCO and Phonics Lead using ‘Daily Keep Up’ or ‘Rapid Catch Up’ interventions.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/