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Phonics
Quality phonics teaching and learning is a key priority at Thorpe Willoughby School and one we recognise as paramount to children progressing to be confident and fluent readers and learners.
Word recognition and understanding is essential to enable children to become skilled and fluent readers. In Reception and Key Stage 1, we place great emphasis on teaching phonics and developing children's phonological awareness. These early years are crucial to establish the foundations for reading fluently and accurately, developing comprehension skills and fostering a love of reading and literature.
To deliver high-quality phonics teaching and learning, we use the newly developed and validated story-based SSP (systematic synthetic phonics) programme Rocket Phonics which not only focuses on the key fundamentals and alphabetic code, but also fosters a love of reading and story. The 'Target Practice Reading Books' are written and illustrated by a range of authors and illustrators which are fully decodable matched to the teaching and learning sequence and progression plan. In addition, the digital 'Big Books' are central to the programme. They consist of language-rich stories to teach all of the target letter sounds in context. These also introduce new vocabulary for discussion.
Our Rocket Phonics Programme fully compliments our whole school reading scheme Rising Stars Reading Planets Scheme. Rocket Phonics is an accredited DfE (Department for Education) phonics programme launched in 2021.
Please click the link below to find out more about our phonics scheme, Rocket Phonics:
To start the reading journey and embed essential early reading skills for children in our Early Years and Key Stage 1, we have invested significantly in new reading books from the Rising Stars Reading Planet Scheme.
Please click the link below to find out more about our reading scheme, Reading Planet:
Glossary of key words used in phonics
CVC | Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words e.g. cat, pin |
CVCC/ CCVC | Consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant words e.g. milk, belt Consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant words e.g. clap, from |
grapheme | a visual representation of a sound this can be a single letter or a group of letters. |
digraph | 2 letters making 1 sound e.g. ai, sh |
trigraph | 3 letters making 1 sound e.g. igh, air |
split digraph | when the digraph has been separated by other letters e.g. name |
blending | Blending is the skill of joining sounds together to read words. We teach the children to say the sounds and blend them together. |
segmenting | This is the opposite to blending. The children will say the individual sounds in a word to spell it. |