Phonics
At Limpsfield C.E. Infant School we value reading as a key life skill and are passionate about enabling and equipping our pupils with a secure phonic knowledge so that they become confident, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One and have a lifelong love of reading.
Intent
At Limpsfield we use the Ruth Miskin Read Write Inc phonics programme (RWI). RWI is a comprehensive literacy programme, weaving decoding, comprehension, writing and spelling together seamlessly. The teaching programme, rigorous assessment, tracking and one-to-one tutoring ensure that schools guarantee progress for every child. Our intention is therefore to engage secure but confident readers.
Implementation
Phonics is taught to children from Reception to Year 2. We begin teaching phonics in the first few days of term 1 in the Early Years class and children make rapid progress in their reading journey.
From Reception the children are organised in groups by phonic ability level across the years rather than by age. Phonics is taught for half an hour daily. In each lesson, children will listen to and practise saying the phoneme independently as well as blending the phoneme within words. The phonemes will be taught in order through 3 sets with children progressing through each set as appropriate to their reading level. The teaching of phonics is supported through the use of set specific reading texts matched to children’s phonics level. All staff who deliver the RWI programme have been trained, which gives them the skills, knowledge and confidence to plan, deliver and assess phonics to a high standard. To ensure progress of all pupils, is monitored and evaluated closely and all teachers have high aspirations of every pupil.
The programme have a fully matched decodable book, which they can take home to read. We encourage parents to read this book, more than once to support comprehension.
Every child has a baseline assessment and pupils are taught within small homogenous groups fluidly across year groups, which reflect their performance in RWI phonics assessments. The children are subsequently assessed formally each half term by their class teacher and placed in groups based on phonetic understanding. Phonics is embedded across the curriculum and children are encouraged to use these to support their writing across the curriculum.
Children who may find phonics challenging or struggle to read will receive an additional 1:1 tutoring session during the school day.
Children in Year 1 take part in the Governments Phonics Screening Check during the month of June. This check is an informal task carried out 1:1 with a teacher to provide information that the children are making progress within phonics to become a fluent reader. It is a list of 40 words presented as real words and pseudo words (e.g. brip, snorp) to see if children are using their phonics to read the words. It takes no more than 5-10 minutes.
Impact
By the time children leave Key Stage One at Limpsfield C.E. Infant School they are fluent readers.
Our consistent approach to the teaching of our systematic phonics curriculum enables children to become confident, fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers, which in turn, unlocks doors to the rest of the curriculum allowing children to flourish in all areas.
This can be evidenced through our higher than national end of KS! Results and the % of pupils passing the Statutory Phonics Check.
