Phonics Intent Statement

How we teach Phonics at Broke Hall Primary School

At Broke Hall Primary School, we intend to develop skills and confidence in reading, writing and communication. We believe that the teaching of phonics is vital for children to become competent readers and writers. We endeavour to teach phonics in a way that is lively, interactive and investigative. We aim for children to develop excellent phonic knowledge and skills along with an extensive and rich vocabulary.

Phonics is taught in a highly structured programme including daily 25-minute discreet phonics lessons across the Foundation Stage, Year 1 and Year 2.  We follow the Bug Club Phonics Scheme which provides a systematic, synthetic approach to the teaching of phonics.

Each session has a clear structure and gives an opportunity for children to revisit their previous learning, learn a new phoneme, then practise together and apply in their writing.

We encourage independence and active learning. We aim to use phonics as a tool to engage children and foster a lifelong love of reading.

Assessment for learning enables us to move on through phases with pace, following a structured planning sequence.

We use sound buttons/bars and pseudo words in every lesson. Reading pseudo words, which are sometimes referred to as nonsense or alien words, is a useful way for children to practise their segmenting and blending skills by using known sounds to read unknown words.

Our English books show how we use our phonics in our writing with a focus on reading and writing from the very first set of sounds taught.

Children also have the opportunity to practise their phonics learning at home through Bug Club online games and Ebooks set by their teacher to consolidate phonics taught in class.

How to say the sounds correctly

In class, an important step in teaching systematic, synthetic phonics is to teach the sounds – this is one of the easier steps for children to make. However, if the sounds are pronounced incorrectly, it can make the next step; blending for reading, all the harder. Please watch the clip below to ensure your child is pronouncing the sounds correctly.

Don't forget to refer back to the letter names.

Parent and carers guide to pronouncing phonemes - YouTube

Further information about Bug Club Phonics

Bug Club Phonics sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.
There are six overlapping phases. The table below is a summary of each phase:

Phase	Phonic Knowledge and Skills
Phase One	Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.
Phase Two	Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.
Phase Three	The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, the representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language.
Phase Four	No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.
Phase Five	Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.
Phase Six	Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters.

Websites to support your children

https://www.activelearnprimary.co.uk/login?e=-1&c=0#: (Bug Club website)

https://www.gov.uk/education/phonics

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zyfkng8/articles/zt27y4j

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/literacy.html