Our school has full commitment to the early, systematic and focused teaching of phonics to all children. At Quinton Primary School, we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One; we believe that this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality phonics teaching combined with a whole language approach which promotes a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.

Intent

• We are determined that every child will learn to read, regardless of their background, needs or abilities.
• Our phonics programme matches the expectations of the English national curriculum and early learning goals.
• We have clear expectations of pupils’ phonics progress term by term, from Reception to Year 2, and our phonics programme aligns with these expectations.
• Our sequence of reading books shows a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge that is matched closely to our phonics programme.

Implementation

• We have developed sufficient expertise in the teaching of phonics and reading that ensures consistency from one year to the next.
• The assessment of pupils’ phonics progress is half termly and detailed to identify any pupil who is falling behind the programme’s pace, so that targeted support can be given immediately.
• Reading, including the teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics, is taught from the beginning of Reception.
• Teachers and teaching assistants have a clear understanding of how pupils learn to read.
• Teachers and teaching assistants give pupils sufficient practice in reading and re-reading books that match the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know, both at school and at home.
• Staff read aloud stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction that develop pupils’ vocabulary, language, comprehension and love of reading.

Impact

• All pupils, including the weakest readers, make sufficient progress to meet or exceed age-related expectations.
• Pupils are familiar with and enjoy listening to a wide range of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction.

We teach Phonics using the Twinkl Phonics scheme, which follows the DfE Letters and Sounds programme.

Please see our Phonics Policy and Long Term Plan for more information.

At the end of Year 1, all children take the Phonics Screening Check. This assesses the children’s understanding of the sounds they are taught and how they use them to read words. If children do not reach the expected level, they retake the Phonics Screening Check in Year 2. Please see the government document below for more information about the Phonics Screening Check.