At St. Patrick’s we teach systematic, synthetic phonics through the government approved scheme, Rocket Phonics. Rocket Phonics Online is a phonics teaching and learning programme that includes a wide range of reading practice books in digital format. These eBooks can be assigned to the children and read online at school or at home on any internet-enabled device. The books in Rocket Phonics Online are designed to appeal to children who are starting to learn to read, as well as those who are becoming fluent readers and ensure that the children read a book that is appropriate to their phonics knowledge and skills. The books include a variety of fiction and non-fiction, written by phonics experts and children’s book writers. All the books have been carefully levelled according to book banding and other criteria, to ensure gradual progression in difficulty. Each eBook features an optional audio recording (with each word highlighted as it is read) and a variety of quizzes to check children’s understanding of what they have read.

The Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework aims:

• It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading.
• Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.

Children at the expected level of development in Literacy will:

• Say a sound for each letter in the alphabet and at least 10 digraphs;
• Read words consistent with their phonic knowledge by sound-blending;
• Read aloud simple sentences and books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge, including some common exception words.

Nursery

Insert Nursery Phonics Pictures

Reception

The national curriculum for reading aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding.

Year 1 should be taught to:

• Apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words
• Respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes (letters or groups of letters) for all 40+ phonemes, including, where applicable, alternative sounds for graphemes
• Read accurately by blending sounds in unfamiliar words containing GPCs that have been taught
• Read common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
• Read words containing taught GPCs and –s, –es, –ing, –ed, –er and –est endings
• Read other words of more than one syllable that contain taught GPCs
• Read words with contractions [for example, I’m, I’ll, we’ll], and understand that the apostrophe represents the omitted letter(s)
• Read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words
• Re-read these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading.

For those children who do not pass their phonics screening check at the end of Year 1, they continue to partake in phonics lessons to ensure they pass by the end of KS1.

Year 2 should be taught to:

• Continue to apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words until automatic decoding has become embedded and reading is fluent
• Read accurately by blending the sounds in words that contain the graphemes taught so far, especially recognising alternative sounds for graphemes
• Read accurately words of two or more syllables that contain the same graphemes as above
• Read words containing common suffixes
• Read further common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
• Read most words quickly and accurately, without overt sounding and blending, when they have been frequently encountered
• Read aloud books closely matched to their improving phonic knowledge, sounding out unfamiliar words accurately, automatically and without undue hesitation
• Re-read these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading.

For the minority of pupils at St. Patrick’s who still require access to phonics teaching, they receive phonic intervention as we believe that all children deserve quality first teaching.