Heath Fields Primary School

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Phonics

phonics

In Key Stage One, children are taught synthetic phonics through 20 minute, daily sessions in groups which are streamed according to the phase in which they are working.  At Heath Fields Primary, we use the Bug Club programme which gives children a firm, fun foundation in phonics with a complete phonics programme that's proven to raise reading standards.  We apply and consolidate the sounds learnt in phonics through reading in class using Phonics Bug books and e-books which are fully decodable as well as banded guided reading books which promote a school culture of reading for pleasure.

Bug Club

Click here for a helpful link to show how pure sounds are made.

 

rapidphonics

Those children in Key Stage Two who require additional phonics teaching follow the Rapid Phonics catch-up problem designed for struggling readers, EAL readers and readers with SEN or dyslexia.      

reading clipart

 At Heath Fields, our home readers are levelled from wordless books   up to level 5 readers so that children are able to enjoy books at       home which are well-matched to their needs.  Children are able to   choose from a broad range of books from a wide selection of   celebrated authors as well as reading schemes such as Project X,     Bug Club and Oxford Reading Tree.   

 

Aspect 1 - General sound discrimination - environmental

The aim of this aspect is to raise children's awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

Aspect 2 - General sound discrimination - instrumental sounds

This aspect aims to develop children's awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Aspect 3 - General sound discrimination - body percussion

The aim of this aspect is to develop children's awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children's appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Aspect 5 - Alliteration

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Aspect 6 - Voice sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

 

In Phase 2, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time. A set of letters is taught each week, in the following sequence:

Set 1: s, a, t, p
Set 2: i, n, m, d
Set 3: g, o, c, k
Set 4: ck, e, u, r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

As soon as each set of letters is introduced, children will be encouraged to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words. For example, They will learn to blend the sounds s-a-t to make the word sat. They will also start learning to segment words.

 

By the time they reach Phase 3, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 letters taught in Phase 2.

Over the twelve weeks which Phase 3 is expected to last, twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a time).

Set 6: j, v, w, x

Set 7: y, z, zz, qu

Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

 

When children start Phase Four of the Letters and Sounds phonics programme, they will know a grapheme for each of the 42 phonemes. They will be able to blend phonemes to read CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and segment in order to spell them.

Children will also have begun reading straightforward two-syllable words and simple captions, as well as reading and spelling some tricky words.

In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced. The main aim of this phase is to consolidate the children's knowledge and to help them learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and milk.

 


 

 

 

Children entering Phase Five will already be able to read and spell words with adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and flask. They will also be able to read and spell some polysyllabic words.

In Phase Five, children will learn more graphemes and phonemes. For example, they already know ai as in rain, but now they will be introduced to ay as in day and a-e as in make.

Alternative pronunciations for graphemes will also be introduced, e.g. ea in tea, head and break.

 

Below are some links to websites that have some fun phonics games to play and resources that you may find useful.

letters and sounds

phonicsplay

Spelling

 

As a school we follow the No Nonsense Spelling programme  from Year 2 to Year 6

 

The focus of the programme is on the teaching of spelling, which embraces knowledge of spelling conventions - patterns and rules; but integral to the teaching is he opportunity to promote the learning of spellings, including statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings.

This programme

  • delivers a manageable tool for meeting the requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum
  • has a clear progression through blocks of teaching units across the year
  • comprehensively explains how to teach spelling effectively 

 

How No Nonsense Spelling is organised

The programme consists of the following elements:

  • The requirements of the National Curriculum, which have been organised into strands and then broken down into termly  overviews.
  • Termly overviews that have been mapped across weeks as half termly plans. these follow a model of 5 spelling sessions across 2 weeks, except in Year 2 where sessions are daily.
  • Daily lessons plans for each session with supporting resources, including word lists and guidance on conventions.