Phonics

Please open the document below for details of our Phonics Curriculum.


Phonics at Coombe Bissett is taught through Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. We follow Letters and Sounds, which is designed to help teachers and practitioners teach children what sounds the different letters make and how to blend them and segment them for reading and writing.

We support our phonics teaching with the use of the SONG OF SOUNDS programme which teaches phonics combined with singing. It s highly motivational and the children absolutely love these daily sessions.

By the end of Phase 2 children should:

  • say each of the sounds using the action to support them
  • match the sound to the letter
  • be beginning to write the letters
  • orally blend and segment CVC words
  • be able to blend and segment in order to read and write CVC and VC words such as in, at, cat, pin, sock, log
  • be able to blend ‘alien’ CVC words such as dis, nam, ret, lom
  • be able to read the tricky words I, the, to, no, go, into
  • be beginning to segment CVC words and write the sounds in order

By the end of Phase 3 children should:

  • be able to say the sounds for all phase 2 and phase 3 letters
  • match the sound to the letter for phase 2 and phase 3 sounds
  • be able to blend CVC words containing phase 2 sounds and the phase 3 ‘friendly sounds’ (oa, ai, ng, oi). These words would include rock, boat, ship, bang
  • be able to segment and write CVC words containing phase 2 and phase 3 sounds
  • be able to read the tricky words he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my, her
  • be able to spell the tricky words from phase 2 I, the, to, no, go, into
  • be able to write the letters from phase 2 with correct formation and have a good attempt at the phase 3 letters

By the end of Phase 4 children should:

  • be able to say and match all of the phase 2 and 3 sounds confidently
  • be able to blend CCVC (consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant) and CVCC words containing both phase 2 and 3 sounds confidently. For example chin, shop, wish, with
  • be making good attempts at segmenting CCVC and CVCC words using their knowledge of phase 2 and 3 sounds
  • be able to read the tricky words said, have, like, so, do, come, some, were, there, little, one, when, out, what
  • be able to write the phase 3 tricky words he, she, we, be, me, was, you, they, all, are, my, her
  • be able to form all letters correctly- starting in the correct place, going in the right direction, positioning it correctly on the line.

By the end of Phase 5 children should:

  • give the sound when shown any grapheme that has been taught; for any given sound, write the common graphemes
  • apply phonic knowledge and skill as the prime approach to reading and spelling unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable
  • read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words
  • read automatically all the words in the list of 100 high-frequency words
  • accurately spell most of the words in the list of 100 high-frequency words; form each letter correctly
     

Assessing Phonics

Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are regularly assessed in phonics. Those children who have not met the requirements at the end of Year 2 continue to be taught and assessed in Phonics in Year 3 and beyond until they meet the requirements.

There is a National Year 1 Phonics Screening Test applied in June in Year 1.