Keyham Barton’s Phonics Curriculum Statement
Intent
At Keyham Barton we are passionate about ensuring all children become confident and enthusiastic readers and writers. We believe that phonics provides the foundations of learning to make the development into fluent reading and writing easier. Through phonics children learn to segment words to support their spelling ability and blend sounds to read words. The teaching of phonics is of high priority.
Implement
At Keyham we use the Department of Education approved document Read, Write Inc (R.W.I.) resources for our teaching of phonics. This allows our phonics teaching and learning to be progressive from our E.Y.F.S. up to Year 2. The Keyham Barton Curriculum map details the sounds (phonemes) to be taught each week, alongside the Common Exception Words (Tricky words/High Frequency Words) to be read and spelt.
EYFS, Y1 and Y2 have discrete, daily phonics sessions where they revise previous learning, are taught new graphemes/phonemes, practise together and apply what they have learnt. Through Letters and Sounds, the children are taught the 44 phonemes that make up all the sounds required for reading and spelling. These phonemes include those made by just one letter and those that are made by two or more. Children work through the different phases and as they grow in confidence and experience, they are introduced to alternative ways of representing the same sound. Home readers are initially phonics based and chosen to consolidate the sounds learnt in class.
Impact
Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent decoders when reading by the end of Key Stage 1 and have achieved a benchmarking level of reading gold level or higher by the end of Y2. Children can then focus on developing fluency and comprehension throughout the school. Formative attainment in reading and writing using phonics is currently assessed using RWI whilst summative attainment in reading using phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1.Both summative and formative writing assessment evidences the use and application of phonics when spelling.
