Phonics

We use Floppy’s Phonics to teach phonics. This is a rigorous, content-rich systematic synthetic phonics programme that fully supports early reading and writing. It includes the characters: Floppy the dog, Biff, Chip and Kipper and their family and friends. The programme fully engages our children in their phonics journey. We start the program in EYFS and teach daily lessons to develop each child so they are able to read with fluency and develop a love of reading. During lessons children use online interactive resources, flashcards, grapheme tiles, phoneme frames, worksheets and reading books.

The Floppy’s Phonics programme teaches the letter-sound correspondences of the English alphabetic code explicitly and comprehensively for reading and spelling.

Initially children’s listening skills are developed through the use of music, environmental sounds and rhyme. During their journey through the Reception and Key Stage 1 they are taught the 44 phonemes (sounds) that make up all the sounds required for reading and spelling. These phonemes include those made by just one letter ‘b as in bed’ and those that are made by two ‘ai as in rain or three letters ‘igh as in high’.

Children are taught the key skills of blending and segmenting to be able to read and write.

As the children grow in confidence and experience, they are introduced to alternative ways of representing the same sound, eg ‘ee’ can be represented as ‘ee as in bee’, ‘ea as in tea’, ‘e-e as in theme’ and ‘e as in we’. They also learn when to apply simple spelling rules and use verbs in the correct tense.

Children are exposed to the phases of phonics that are appropriate for their stage, any children who experience difficulty in retaining what they have been taught are helped with intervention in small groups.

How parents and carers can support Early Reading

During your child’s time in school, you will be offered the opportunity to attend several workshops which will support you to understand the way we teach phonics in school and how children are tested at Year 1.

You can help at home by practicing the sounds with your child. Click here to view a helpful video which will support you with the pronunciation of sounds. Once your child has learned the sounds that are made by letters and groups of letters, they are then taught to blend the sounds to read words. Blending means to say the individual sounds that make up the word and put them together to hear the whole word. Click here to see how you can help support your child with blending.

Your child will bring a reading book home each day we ask for at least 3 reading comments to be added to their reading record each week for KS1 and at least 4 comments for KS2. The reading books are very carefully chosen to match the sounds that your child has recently learnt.

It is really important for your child reads these books more than once to develop their fluency and confidence in reading. The children must learn to enunciate each sound correctly so they can identify them in words.

Terminology

Teachers will use the correct terminology during phonics lessons with the children. Here is a list of terms that your child will be referring to.

Terminology	Definition
Phoneme	A single sound that can be made by one or more letters – e.g. s, k, z, oo, ph, igh
Blend	Blending involves merging the sounds in a word together in order to pronounce it. For eg j-a-m blended together reads jam.
Segment	The opposite of blending as it means splitting a word up into individual sounds when spelling and writing. The children count the sounds at they segment them on their fingers.
CVC	CVC Words: this is an abbreviation used for consonant-vowel-consonant words. It describes the order of sounds. Examples are; cat, dog, kit Other similar abbreviations include: VC (Vowel Consonant) e.g on it is CCVC (Consonant, Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) e.g trap, black. CVCC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant, Consonant) e.g. milk and fast.
Digraph	two letters which together make one sound e.g. ee, oa, ea, ch, ay.There are different types of digraph:Vowel digraph: a digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel: boat or day.Consonant digraph: two consonants which can go together: shop or thin.Split digraph (previously called magic e): two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word e.g. a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e. For example cake or pine.
Trigraph	three letters go together to make one sound e.g. ear, air, igh, dge, tch.
Grapheme	written letter or a group of letters which represent one single sound (phoneme) e.g. a, l, sh, air, ck.
Helpful words (previously called tricky words)	words that are difficult to sound out e.g. said, the, because which don’t follow phonics rules

Phonics Assessment

Teacher’s will keep an ongoing record of the sounds words the children have learnt on a weekly basis. This assessment is carried out in a way which is appropriate for the age of the children. Children in EYFS will be assessed in a practical way and staff will record the sounds they know.

Year 1 – formal assessment termly. Children will be assessed on their ability to read words containing the sounds they have learnt, for example the sound ‘ai’ in the words ‘rain’.

Autumn 1 (end of September)

Autumn 2 (December)

Spring 1 (February)

Spring 2 (April)

Summer 1 (Phonics screen)

Phonics Screening Check