Early Reading & Phonics

At Penwortham Primary School we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident readers who are passionate about reading.

Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds! Our expectation is that children read at home four times a week and record this in their reading diaries.

More importantly, reading will give your child the tools to become independent life-long learners.

We can achieve this together through:

-Super Sonic Phonics program to help to your child read at school

-Encouraging children to develop a love of books by reading to them daily, at home and at school

-Giving children access to a wide range of books at school and at home

We use the Super Sonic Phonics Friends scheme to give your child the best possible start with their literacy development. Mrs Barlow is our phonics lead, so if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact her [email protected] 

Supersonic Phonic Friends

As a school we have successfully adopted ‘Super Sonic Phonics Friends’, to support us with the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. This ensures a consistent approach across early years and Key Stage 1 (Key Stage 2 when required.) ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends’ is based on the well-recognised ‘Letters and Sounds’. Super Supersonic Phonic Friends is an enchanted adventure of phonics where along the way children will meet several friendly woodland characters who represent each literacy skill involved. Supported by the children’s new ‘Supersonic friends’ and rhyming captions and phrases, this approach will ensure children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing.

Pre-School

Supersonic Phonic Friends starts in our Pre-school Class and follows a very specific sequence that allows our children to build on their previous phonic knowledge and master specific phonic strategies as they move through school. The focus is on listening and identifying the different sounds we hear in our environment and in songs, stories and rhymes. Once children can hear and differentiate between sounds they are ready to begin exploring how words are made up of sounds and start playing games like ‘I spy’.

The Supersonic Phonic Friends phonics’ curriculum for our Pre-School is split up into 7 aspects.

Aspect 1 – General Sound Discrimination – Environmental Sounds

The aim of this aspect is to raise children’s awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested may include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

Aspect 2 – General Sound Discrimination – Instrumental Sounds

This aspect aims to develop children’s awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Aspect 3 – General Sound Discrimination – Body Percussion

The aim of this aspect is to develop children’s awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Aspect 4 – Rhythm and Rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children’s appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Aspect 5 – Alliteration

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Aspect 6 – Voice Sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities may include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot’s mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice – /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Aspect 7 – Oral Blending and Segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

For example, to practise oral blending, the adult could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and sees whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the adult could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

Reception

During the Foundation Stage year children are introduced to phonemes and their corresponding graphemes. We begin to look at single letter sounds and the representing spelling for this – spelling for the sounds.

Each spelling for the sound has a picture and an action, for example “squishy squishy strawberry.”

Children then begin to read and write three letter words; matching the grapheme to the sound they can hear.

As they become confident and fluent readers and writers of CVC words children are then introduced to digraphs; where two letters make one sound. Throughout the whole of the reception year our phonic teaching relies on the firm foundations of orally blending and segmenting and is deep rooted in rhythm and rhyme. By the end of EYFS children should be fluent with all 44 sounds; including one way to represent them.

Reading

The children:

• Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letters/letter groups

• Learn to read words using sound buttons for segmenting and sound blending

• Read from a range of storybooks and non-fiction books matched to their phonic knowledge

• Develop comprehension skills in stories by answering 'Find It' and 'Prove It' discussion questions

Writing

The children:

·Learn to write and form the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds with the help of fun phrases (see below)

Learn to write words by using phonics fingers

• Learn to build sentences by practising sentences out loud before they write 

Children begin reading blending books and phonics bug books in the Reception Class as soon as they can recognise the first set of sounds in phase 2. These books are matched to children’s phonic ability and reading these books will support the development of the children’s skills in learning to decode and blend words.

Children progress through the remainder of their time in Reception, Year One and Year Two working through our structured reading books until they are ready to move onto free choice colour banded books. They take their books to read at home and this is monitored weekly in class. Throughout this process the children are assessed on a regular basis to check their reading ability and to ensure that they are reading the correct stage books for their ability.

Phonics in Key Stage 1

In Year 1 children develop their ability to hear and remember more than three sounds in a row and explore adjacent consonants to read CVCC and CCVC words such as ‘think, coast and blink’. They also become fluent at recognising and applying alternative sounds for the 44 graphemes they learnt in Foundation Stage and are introduced to alternative ways to make each of the digraphs they have previously learnt.  Through the use of the characters 'Switch it Mitch' and 'Choose to Use Suze' they recognise spelling patterns and rules to identify which spelling they need to represent the sound. By the end of Year 1 children will have had access to over 100 spellings to make the 44 sounds.

Children learn to read ‘tricky words’ with Tricky Tess.  Tricky words are words that cannot be read by decoding. 

Tricky Tess helps to work out the tricky part of the word, “We need to work out what is the tricky part of the word. If it is in blue I will show you what to do.” 

Children are also introduced to 'Nonsense Nan' who will guide them through how to read alien and real words in preparation for the Year 1 Phonic Screening Check at the end of their time in Year 1.

From Year 2, we continue to explore grapheme phoneme correspondence and learn spelling rules to support our reading and writing development. Supersonic Phonic Friends allows us access to a tailored programme of spelling rules for both children in Year 1 and Year 2. 

Structure of Lessons

All lessons are delivered using a consistent set of slides provided by the phonic scheme. They follow the structure of:

Review and Revisit

During this part of the session, children will recap on the spellings for the sounds and tricky words or high frequency words previously taught and oral blending and segmenting activities.

Teach

This is the part of the lesson where new learning takes place. Children will be introduced to the characters who are a key part in the steps in learning.  Helpful phrases with actions are used to engage and stimulate the children, providing a multisensory approach.  The children are orally introduced to a new spelling for the sound and taught how to orally blend and segment words containing that sound. They will be shown the grapheme to represent the sound and then the teacher models blending, reading and writing.

Practice

During this section children are given the opportunity to read and write words containing the new spelling for the sound as well as orally spell and blend words with their phonic buddy. They will use a range of resources to embed their new learning; ensuring there is an equal balance of reading and writing.

Apply

In every lesson children will be given an application task where they are expected to read and write new words and sounds within a caption or a sentence. This allows children to see their new learning in a context and to further embed their vocabulary and fluency. They will also apply tricky words and high-frequency words to their reading or writing.

Within this structure all children become familiar with the characters and know the roles of their jobs. Children are given an equal balance of reading and writing phonic activities to ensure there is equal weighting to their application of skills.

Assessment

Supersonic Phonic Friends is a programme rooted in the belief that “wrapping the children in lessons full rhyme will allow children to achieve every time,” and that the careful and rigorous assessment will allow children at risk of falling behind to be pinpointed quickly and teachers can intervene effectively.

Comprehensive assessments take place at the end of each phase using whole class trackers to allow staff to easily identify children who are on track, above or if they require extra support to ‘keep up’ in their phonics and the application of their reading and writing.

Slide Shows and Videos

Supersonic Phonic Friends have created videos to support

•          Basics 2 Alliterative Rhymes and Actions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlp7sAcP9Bg

•          Basics 3 Alliterative Rhymes and Actions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SN0rINaNeo

•          Supersonic Phonic Friends Helpful Phrases and Actions 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bzgd87Z5FE&t=65s

Please visit the website below for more information: 

https://www.supersonicphonicfriends.co.uk/