Phonics
At Bowker Vale Primary School children's initial route into early reading is through the teaching of systematic, synthetic phonics.
Children in Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 follow the synthetic phonics approach, using the ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends’ scheme. It is an approach to teaching phonics in which individual letters or letter sounds (phonemes) are blended to form groups of letters or sounds, and those groups are then blended to form complete words. Children also use actions from the scheme to help them remember letter sounds.
Our daily phonics sessions are fast paced and fun, involving lots of speaking, listening and games. The emphasis is on children’s active participation. They learn to apply their phonic knowledge for reading and writing activities and in their independent play.
Supersonic Phonic Friends is divided into six phases, known as The Basics and Higher Levels, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. There are no big leaps in learning. Children have time to practise and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’ – words with spellings that are unusual or that children have not yet been taught. These include the words ‘to’, ‘was’, ‘said’ and ‘the’.
Our guided reading books are also linked to the phonics phases and teachers select books carefully in order to match them to the childrens' phonic ability.
It is important that your child learns to pronounce the phonemes (letter sounds) that we teach so that they can master the skills of blending to read and segmenting to spell words. Please click here to watch a video of the correct pronunciation of phonemes.
When learning to read and write it is important children learn to pronounce the sounds letters make correctly. Please click on the links below for videos on how to pronounce letter sounds correctly.
Please click here for a video on how to pronounce letter sounds correctly.
Please click here for a video on how to pronounce digraphs correctly.
Click here for details of how children progress in their Phonics, Grammar and Spelling at Bowker Vale from Nursery to Year 6.
The Basics 1
The Basics 1 begins in Nursery. This phase paves the way for the systematic learning of phonics. During this phase especially, we plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys, musical instruments, sounds in the environment and to sounds in spoken language. Children in Nursery learn to identify, talk about and replicate these sounds. We teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and read good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books. The children learn to identify rhyme and alliteration. These skills continue to be developed throughout KS1 and KS2.
Please click to play a guess the sound game.
Please click to play an animal sounds game.
The Basics 2 (RecEPTION)
Phonemes are introduced in a systematic way, along with a few 'tricky words' which can't be read phonetically.
Set 1 – s a t p
Set 2 – i n m d
Set 3 – g o c k
Set 4 – ck e u r
Set 5 – h b f ff l ll s ss
Please click to play buried treasure. This game will help your child learn to blend and read words. You just need to click on the letter you would like to practise with your child.
Please click to play a word and picture matching game.
The Basics 3 (RecEPTION)
By the end of Phase 3 the children will know one way of writing down each of the 44 phonemes.
Set 6 – j v w x
Set 7 – y z zz qu
Consonant diagraphs – ch sh th ng
Vowel diagraphs (and trigraphs) – ai ee igh oa oo ar ur ow oi ear air ure er
Please click to play buried treasure. This game will help your child learn to blend and read words. You just need to click on the letter or digraph you would like to practise with your child.
Please click to play a sentence substitution game. You just need to select a sentence then see if your child can swap some of the words to make a new sentence.
The Basics 4 (yr1)
This phase helps children to blend and segment words with adjacent consonants e.g. truck, help.
It is very important that these phonemes are pronounced clearly and correctly so that children are able to blend them together.
Please click to play Dragon's Den. This is a blending to read game.
The Higher Levels 5 - Choose to use (yr1)
Weeks 1 – 4 – New phonemes introduced including split digraphs - a_e e_e i_e o_e u_e
Weeks 4 – 7
These weeks introduce the idea that some graphemes can be pronounced in more than one way. E.g. the ch grapheme can be pronounced in each of these ways, check, chef and school.
THE HIGHER LEVELS 5 - SWITCH IT SPELL (YR1)
Weeks 8 – 30
This part of Phase 5 is all about learning that some phonemes have more than one spelling. E.g. the /ee/ phoneme in meet, treat, Pete.
Please click to play sorting and sound spotting games.
Please click to play a sentence substitution game. You just need to select a sentence then see if your child can swap some of the words to make a new sentence.
Spelling curriculum - in Years 2-6 the children follow the National Curriculum for spelling.
Year One Phonics Screening Check
A national Phonics Screening Check was introduced in 2012. It is meant to show how well your child can use the phonics skills they’ve learned up to the end of Year 1, and to identify students who need extra phonics help.
The check involves reading up to 40 real and pseudo (pretend) words using their phonic knowledge and takes only a few minutes to complete. The phonics check takes place each June, you will be informed of your child's result and whether or not they have reached the expected standard (this is usually a score of between 32 and 34 out of 40). If your child does not reach the expected standard they will have some extra help with phonics during Y2 and retake the screen the following June.
If you have any questions about the phonics screen please speak to your child's teacher.
