Curriculum - English
Phonics, Reading and Writing
Our Approach to the Teaching of Phonics
Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write by developing their phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate different sounds used in the English language. Children learn the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. At our school, we place a strong emphasis on the teaching of phonics in the early years of reading and writing in order to give all children a solid foundation for learning. Because not all words in the English language comply to the rules of phonics we also teach so-called ‘sight words’ by repetition and retrieval.
Phonics lessons at Aycliffe School are taught daily from Nursery up to Year 2. The sessions are short, engaging and memorable with an emphasis placed on revising a previously learned letter-sound correspondence, learning a new one, practicing this, and applying it to sentence level work.
The teaching of phonics begins in Nursery and Reception using the ‘Read, Write, Inc’ scheme which continues in Years 1 and 2, where children learn alternative spellings of the previously learned sounds and refining their knowledge to become more fluid readers and more accurate spellers.
During the Summer term in Year 1, children nationwide are tested on their phonic knowledge. This test helps us to identify children who have gaps in their phonic knowledge and may need further support in Year 2. The test is low-key and we make it stress-free for the children. The children are asked to read 40 words from a list, using their phonics to ‘sound out’ the word and then blend it if they need to. Parents are informed as to whether their child has achieved the national expectation within the child’s end-of-year reports.
For more details of our English curriculum including how we teach reading and writing please see the documents below.
Click on this link to read our intent, implementation and impact statement within our English Policy.
Click on this link to view our English Nursery long term plan with reading spine
Click on this link to view our English Reception -Year 6 long term plans with reading spine
Click on this link to view our progression documents for Year 1-6 Reading
Click on these links to view our progression documents for:
