Goosnargh Oliverson's Primary School

Goosnargh Oliverson's Church of England Primary School

Phonics & Spelling

Intent

At Oliverson’s we are passionate that our children not only become confident readers but also children who read for enjoyment. We believe this attitude stems from the earliest years in their education and the teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics plays a large role in this. We are intent on our children becoming independent and enthusiastic readers and writers and we are therefore committed to the daily teaching of phonics in the Early Years Foundation Stage, KS1 and spellings in KS2. 

Through the Lancashire Red Roses phonics scheme we endeavour that our EYFS and KS1 children quickly learn the skills to segment sounds for spelling and blend sounds for reading. Reading and writing are life skills that we long our children to become competent in from an early age. We believe that the teaching and learning of phonics is fundamental to children being able to access and enjoy the wider curriculum. We ensure that children's home reading books are closely matched to their phonics knowledge in order for them to feel confident readers and able to apply the skills they have learnt. 

 

Click here for phonics vocabulary  

 

red rose phonics overview.pdf

 

 

Implementation

Early reading and writing is underpinned by good quality phonics teaching.  The systematic teaching of phonics has a high priority throughout the Early Years and KS1 and is taught daily. We value the importance of timely interventions to help children to keep up rather than need to catch up. 

At Oliverson’s we follow the Lancashire Red Rose scheme of progression by introducing the children to a new sound a day. We teach the children the correct letter formations at the same time as introducing a new sound. 

We place equal emphasis on being able to decode the sounds for reading as well as segment them for independent spelling. We directly teach children tricky words as well as high frequency words and we introduce them to pseudo words early on in preparation for the phonics screening test. 

Teachers are continuously assessing the children and track them throughout their phonics journey to ensure that all children make good progress and receive additional support when it's needed. 

In at the end of KS1 and in KS2 spelling is broken up into a weekly progression, following key National Curriculum objectives and takes children through the statutory and non-statutory words and spelling rules in each age phase.