Phonics

Our Intent

At Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, we recognise that reading is a key life skill and that the ability to read brings life-long pleasure. Reading is at the heart of everything we do. Our children have access to a wide range of high-quality genres and texts, promoting a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure. We aspire to instil in all children a love of reading that we hope will stay with them for life. We develop a love of reading alongside our phonics programme through poems, rhymes, stories and non-fiction texts. This ensures children are exposed to a breadth of vocabulary, language and comprehension skills.

The teaching of phonics and early reading throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 via our early reading curriculum is of the highest priority. We aim to give children the best start on their reading journey by developing their phonological skills and knowledge needed in order to decode words independently. The Bug Club Phonics scheme allows children to secure each grapheme quickly, as we teach them the key phonological skills and knowledge needed in order to decode words independently. The more graphemes the children learn to read and write, the greater amount of words they will be able to read and spell.

Our ultimate goal is for every child to quickly become enthusiastic and motivated readers. We strive for each child to have the ability to recognise, blend and segment sounds, in order to read words, as well as reading sight words, in order to become confident, fluent readers, who show a good understanding of what they have read. Fluency enables skilled reading and comprehension.

Phonics programme

At Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, we have chosen to use Bug Club Phonics Scheme. This is a comprehensive teaching programme and DFE approved systematic synthetic phonics scheme which has been found to be successful academically for children. This scheme has shown to increase positive attitudes to reading and be a great motivator for more reluctant readers, boosting children’s confidence and enjoyment of reading right at the beginning of their reading journey.

The Bug Club Phonics programme follows a similar teaching sequence to Letters and Sounds and lessons are structured in the same way each day with an introduction, revisit, teach, practise and apply element to every session (Please see our flow chart below for more information). The consistent, fun and engaging lessons support children to build confidence and provides them with routines they become familiar with.

The approach to teaching Bug Club Phonics

Our Phonics Flow Chart (which can be found below) outlines how daily Phonics lessons are taught to ensure consistency across the year groups. Lesson are taught to the whole class, to ensure inclusive practice and to ensure all children have exposure to different phonemes/graphemes. We teach the Phonics phases in the following way:

  • Reception – Phases 1 - 4
  • Year 1 – Phases 3 – 6
  • Year 2 – Phases 5 – 6

Teacher’s complete half-termly assessments and where assessments show that children need support to catch-up, they receive intervention sessions targeted to their specific needs and more frequent reading in the classroom. This may be done either one-one or small group support alongside these sessions.

Decodable reading books and reading at home

Here at Burton Leonard Primary School, we understand that allowing children the opportunity to frequently practise their segmenting and blending skills and to consolidate the learning from each phonics session is vital. Alongside our phonics teaching, two Bug Club phonics books are issued to the children each week. One of these is read 3 times a week during adult-led Guided Reading sessions in class. The second book is for children to take home and practise over the course of a week. We ask that children read these books at least 3 times to provide the opportunity to focus on decoding the book, focus on reading for speed and fluency and read for comprehension.

Reading daily with children is imperative in supporting children’s use and understanding of vocabulary. These books are fully decodable, which means that every word in the book can be read using just the children’s developing phonics knowledge. They are matched to the children’s phonic ability which allows children to embed and secure their phonic knowledge, and in turn allows them to build their confidence, motivation and enthusiasm for reading.

At Burton Leonard, we aim to create a strong link with parents in order to facilitate and support children’s reading journey at home. We believe that children will experience the most success in reading when school and home work together. Watching both family members and teachers use reading and writing for everyday purposes supports children to develop an understanding on the importance of learning to read. Reading for pleasure, sharing stories at home or using a recipe also shows them that reading is a vital, useful skill.

Basic Phonics introduction video for parents and carers

Below you will find links to useful documents. If you wish to speak to someone about Phonics at Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, please contact Miss Newell via the school office.

Long Term Plans & Documents