Phonics
Phonics and Early Reading at Treales CE Primary School.
Our Phonics curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all children. We follow the award-winning Ready Steady Phonics by Literacy Counts, a DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics programme designed to ensure all pupils become fluent, confident readers. The programme is research-informed and impact-proven, supporting children in developing the knowledge and skills needed to decode, comprehend and enjoy reading.
The progression document ensures that phonics is taught daily through a clear four-part lesson structure that builds children's understanding incrementally. Children are taught to apply their phonics knowledge in both reading and writing, supported by matched decodable texts available in print and online. Children who require additional support
access targeted intervention through Ready Steady Go sessions, ensuring no child is left behind. At Treales, using a multi-sensory approach and through ‘quality first teaching’, children’s acquisition of speaking and listening skills, and phonic knowledge and skills are greatly enhanced.
We also prioritise language development and reading for pleasure across our curriculum, recognising that both are key to reading success. Our aim is to help every child see
themselves as a reader for life.
Children have opportunities to apply their phonic knowledge using phonetically decodable books aligned with the phonics teaching and supported with aditional books from a selection of various reading schemes. The sequence of reading books shows a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge. Once the children are secure with the new content that has been taught, they are able to read the books from that set of reading books to develop their fluency.
Our schools agreed approach to the teaching of common exception words is that children are encouraged to use their knowledge of synthetic phonics as much as possible to work out how to read unknown words aloud. The bits of a word that are 'tricky' and do not directly correspond to known grapheme/phoneme correspondence are identified and discussed as a teaching point. Within this sequence, we have identified where we expect ‘tricky’ words and decodable high frequency words to be taught. This includes the decodable high frequency word list from Letters and Sounds (which makes up the 100 high frequency word list), alongside the National Curriculum Common Exception Words.
Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. Children can then focus on developing fluency and comprehension throughout the school. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1.