Reading and Phonics
Phonics at Kingsweston
The approach to teaching phonics is to follow a systematic approach (teaching letter-sound relationships in a defined sequence) and synthetic phonics (teaching grapheme-phoneme correspondences then how to blend and segment them) is explicitly taught.
At Kingsweston teaching is guided by the Essential Letters & Sounds (ELS) programme and is adapted to meet the needs of individual students' and their processing of how this assists their reading development
The pace of delivery has been reduced to allow pupils longer to embed the new phoneme sounds and how they use this within decoding and encoding words.
Overlearning is a key approach used to repeatedly practise a skill until it is embedded in long term memory and can be used fluently.
Phase 1 is delivered to pupils using Twinkl as the main body of resources
Phase 2 – 6 is delivered following the ELS letter & Sounds programme.
Assessment
We use the ELS Diagnostic assessment tool to baseline and track students' phonetic awareness and knowledge during 2 set point across the year.
Delivery of phonics
The delivery of phonics is tailored to students strengths and needs and the approach is determined by the curriculum pathway they are currently working at.
Planned approach for Pathway 1:
|
Key Stage 1 Pupils |
Phase 1 delivery Exposure to Phase 2 |
|
Key Stage 2 Pupils |
Exposure to phase 2 following the ELS approach Multi-sensory learning techniques |
|
Key Stage 3 Pupils |
Pupils begin environmental word learning |
Planned Approach for Pathway 2:
|
Key Stage 1 Pupils
|
Phase 1 delivery Exposure to Phase 2 |
|
Key Stage 2 Pupils |
Phase 2 – 5 delivery with intervention work |
|
Key Stage 3 Pupils |
Intervention work to backward chain gaps of learning |
Planned approach for Pathway 3:
|
Key Stage 1 Pupils |
Phase 2-5 delivery |
|
Key Stage 2 Pupils |
Intervention work |
|
Key Stage 3 Pupils |
Free reading |