Phonics

At Thomas Whitehead CE Academy, phonics is delivered daily in Early Years and KS1 to develop Early Reading skills using the Little Wandle programme, which teaches systematic synthetic phonics. The programme builds on prior learning with continual revisits of previously taught sounds/words. 

Our Intent

The intent of teaching phonics is for our children to be able to:  match graphemes for all phonemes with increasing speed and accuracy; read accurately by blending sounds; decode words (both real and nonsense) accurately – thus giving them confidence to attempt more challenging words in their reading; read and re-read phonic appropriate books with increasing confidence, enabling them to discuss and express views about the text they are reading; and develop a love and enjoyment for reading.
 
At Thomas Whitehead CE Academy, we believe that all of our pupils should be able to confidently communicate their knowledge, ideas and emotions through their writing. We want pupils to acquire a wide vocabulary and be able to spell new words by effectively applying their phonetic knowledge and the spelling patterns and rules that they learn throughout their time in primary school.  It is also our intention that pupils learn to understand the relationships between words (morphology) and the origin of words and their meaning (etymology), whilst ensuring that they are supported in their spelling strategies. 

Lessons 

GPC (Grapheme, Phoneme Correspondents) through speedy flashcards to check children have remembered previously taught sounds.

Revisit - Children segment and blend words with graphemes that they have learned already 

Tricky words - Children are given a new tricky word a day and this is built on throughout the week

Oral blending - Children are taught a new sound and practice orally segmenting and blending words with the new sound. 

Definitions - Children discuss the meaning behind new words 

Sentence - Children write a sentence with words taught in the session (tricky words, new sound, revisit word)

Spellings - Children spell words with new sound and new tricky word 

Keep Up Phonics

Target intervention is provided for children who require extra support and are identified through the assessment process. They Keep Up sessions are an additional intervention that is delivered 3x weekly. All children partake in the main phonics sessions. 

Early readers are assessed half termly to ensure phonologically decodable books are matched using Big Cat Books which link to our Little Wandle programme. Reading practice sessions are taught 3x weekly to develop decoding, prosody and comprehension skills for Early Readers.

Please click on the link to our Parent/carer area which includes public links to all the videos on this page

The resources on these pages will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters. There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home. Find our full Reception and Year 1 teaching programme overview here to see what your child will learn and when.