Phonics

At Keelham phonics is an integral part of the reading process and we believe that the teaching of phonics is most effective when taught in a structured way.

We follow the Letters and Sounds Programme published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007.

All children in the EYFS and in Key Stage 1 take part in daily phonics lessons.

In Nursery, the children are taught Phase 1 where they develop speaking and listening skills and explore environmental sounds.  They are also introduced to rhyme and they engage in lots of activities to reinforce this. Phase 2 is introduced after Easter allowing the children to become familiar with the concept of initial sound and letter shapes.

In Reception, children continue to learn all the Phase 2 single letter sounds (19) and how to blend them together to read and write words.  They develop decoding skills and how to recognise Tricky words.  Reception children then go on to Phase 3 and 4 extending their knowledge of vowel digraphs and in reading beginning to explore comprehension skills.

In Key stage 1, children revisit Phase 4 (where necessary) and also work through Phase 5 and Phase 6.  In Key Stage 1 children become more confident with middle vowel sounds and alternative pronunciation of sounds and graphemes as well as developing their comprehension skills further.

Each phonics lesson is enhanced with resource-based games and activities and songs.

In KS2 there are phonic reading interventions where needed and all children in school take part in regular spelling and grammar lessons.

Home Reading books are given to enhance the phonics learning and are used alongside the Oxford Reading Tree Scheme in KS1 and Songbirds reading scheme in EYFS.

All children are encouraged to read for pleasure and each class has challenges to complete for their Keelham Quest, a school based reading challenge for all ages.