Phonics
Intent
At Rufford Park Primary School 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.
Implementation
At Rufford Park Primary School we have adopted a Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme from September 2022. The scheme we are using is Twinkl Phonics, validated by the Department for Education. This allows our phonics teaching and learning to be progressive and consistent from our Nursery up to Year 2. Children in our Nursery work on Level One phonics, which concentrates on developing their speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Level 2. As children move into Reception they continue to build on their listening skills and are introduced to Level 2 which marks the start of systematic phonics work. They have discrete, daily phonics sessions where they revise previous learning, are taught new graphemes/phonemes, practise together and apply what they have learnt. Through the programme 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 levels and as they grow in confidence and experience, they are introduced to alternative ways of representing the same sound. Children are assessed regularly and interventions put in place to ensure all children achieve.
Impact
Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. Children can then focus on developing fluency and comprehension throughout the school. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1.
