Phonics at Ryvers School
At Ryvers School we follow Letters and Sounds. (Letters and Sounds: Principles and practice of high quality phonics). This is a phonics resource is published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007.
Letters and Sounds is designed to enable the teaching of systematic and high quality phonics. It is taught within a set time period to ensure children have fluent recognition skills by the end of Key Stage One. It also acts as a method of provision for children in Key Stage Two who require supported intervention in their word recognition skills. In addition to the Letters and Sounds programme, we also use ‘Phonics Play’ and ‘Phonics Bug’ resources which enhance
At Ryvers School we aim to enable the children to:
Learning Phonics at Ryvers School
Foundation Stage – Nursery
The Nursery introduce phase one of Letters and Sounds through a discrete phonics input daily. Activities within the Nursery are based on related strands of the phonics programme and allow children to experience phonics in an enhanced and stimulating way, particularly through play. In the Summer Term, children are introduced to Phase Two of the Letters and Sounds programme where they begin recognise, hear and say the discrete sounds, in order to read and write.
Foundation Stage - Reception
Phonics is taught daily in the Reception classes in twenty minute sessions. These sessions are identified on the class timetables. Phase Two of the Letters and Sounds programme is taught in the Autumn Term, with differentiated groups beginning in the Spring Term when Phase Three is taught. The learning in these two Phases is consolidated in the Summer Term by teaching Phase Four of the programme. Teaching Assistants working with a group are required to feedback to the Class Teacher. By the end of the Reception year children are expected to be secure in knowledge to the end of Phase Three.
Key Stage One
Phonics is taught daily in the Key Stage One classes in discrete twenty to thirty minute sessions. These sessions are identified on the class timetables. Children are taught by the Class Teacher in whole class sessions and are supported by Teaching Assistants. Children who require phonics provision are taken out of class in the afternoon to work with Teaching Assistants in an intervention group. By the end of Year One, children are expected to be secure in knowledge to the end of Phase Five. In Year Two children start ‘Support for Spelling’ which revisits Phase Five and continues with Phase Six.
Key Stage Two
Children within Key Stage Two are not taught phonics in discrete sessions; however, their phonological knowledge is applied and developed to guide their spelling and SPAG work. Children are taught about word structure and follow the ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ scheme used throughout the school.
Children who have a lower than chronological reading age and/or have not reached the end of Phase Six are given discrete intervention delivered by a Teaching Assistant or Teacher. The intervention is recorded on the class provision map and is monitored by the English Subject Leader and SENDCO.
Planning is recorded weekly and plans are available to download from the school server. These plans are a basis for the sessions and are required to be adapted accordingly. Planning is regularly monitored by the Headteacher, English Subject Leader and Phase Leaders.
Reading at Ryvers School
The Importance of Reading
The ability to read is fundamental to pupils’ development as independent learners. In order to read across the curriculum with fluency, understanding, confidence and enjoyment, children need to employ a key set of strategies:
• Phonic knowledge and skills.
• Contextual knowledge.
• Grammatical understanding.
• Word decoding and recognition.
• Language comprehension.
Reading development is closely linked to that of writing, and reflecting on and discussing texts is key to children’s understanding of how a writer writes and the special relationship between author and reader. It is through critical and imaginative engagement with texts that children are able to make sense of the world and their place in it.
At Ryvers, we aim to enable children to:
Teaching of Reading
Reading will be taught daily. English lessons will be given an adequate time in the timetabled day to allow for all the aspects that need to be covered.
The children will study a mixture of classics and contemporary literature through shared reading, both with their teacher and each other, during the English lessons.
Every child will read weekly as part of a guided reading group, during which the text will be discussed in depth. All children will be heard regularly in order to PM Benchmark and/or to ensure they are on the correct reading level book.
Children in the Foundation stage begin reading a range of levelled books and work through these at a steady pace; children are assessed each term (or sooner if felt necessary) to identify the correct level of book they should be reading. The focus for the reading is to provide practice, develop personal response, information gathering and most importantly, reading for pleasure. Reading at home independently or to an adult is actively encouraged on a daily basis.