Phonics

At George Spicer, we follow the National Curriculum and it is the aim that by the time children leave our school they are competent at age related expectations in reading and writing. We use Essential Letters and Sounds as our DfE validated phonics programme. It must always be remembered that phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words – decodable and harder to read and spell words (HRSW) – is the ultimate goal. Therefore, the children at George Spicer will not just learn the sounds, but use them as a tool for reading and spelling.  Through the teaching of phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers. This way, children can focus on developing their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school.  We understand that the skills acquired in phonics are the foundations of good literacy skills, which in turn are a basic necessity for thriving as an adult in today’s society – through a solid start in phonics we aim to give our children the reading and writing skills they need to fulfil their potential in becoming exceptional verbal and written communicators and through reading, develop their social, cultural and intellectual awareness to allow them to succeed and flourish in the life choices they make in the future. We aim to ensure all our SEND children access Phonics at an appropriate pitch (both for challenge and support) and have full access to the ELS scheme.  This means they access the statutory SSP scheme.  We recognise Speech and language issues (such as articulation) impact on access to this program and ensure we provide suitable intervention to support ‘keep up, not catch up’.  We are aspirational for all children. 

Essential Letters and Sounds

Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen Phonics programme. The aim of ELS is ‘Getting all children to read well, quickly’. It teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words.

Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently.

Throughout the day, children will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and as a class. 

Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the school to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.

We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover. 

Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support each child’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.

We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs ‘sh’ (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).

We teach children to:

• Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
• Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.

The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.

ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.

Supporting Phonics at Home

Blending 

• After children learn to read some sounds separately, they can start blending them together to form simple words. Take a look at the video below for ideas on how you can practise word blending with your child.  

How to blend sounds to read words - 

https://youtu.be/vqvqMtSNswo

Reading

• Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.
• We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound)
• We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:

          Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.

          Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.

          Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds. (See Videos Below)

New sounds are taught each day, with some review days and weeks to help children practise what they’ve learned. The phase 2 sounds have captions to support children with their letter formation. We encourage children to say these captions when they practise writing their letters. The phase 3 and 5 sounds have captions to help children retain these sounds. Click below to reveal the sounds your child will learn in ELS. (See PDFS for Phase 2, 3 and 5 below)

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