Phonics

What is phonics?

There has been a big shift in the past few years in how we teach reading in school. This is having a huge impact and helping many children learn to read and spell. Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught in helping them learn to read. Phonics runs alongside other teaching methods to help children develop vital reading skills and give them a real love of reading. Words are made up from small units of sound (phonemes) and phonics teaches children to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps them learn to read and spell words.

 

In phonics lessons children are taught three main things:

  • GPCs (grapheme phoneme correspondences)

GPCs simply means that children are taught all the phonemes in the English language and ways of writing them down. The first sounds to be taught are s, a, t, p.

  • Blending

Children are taught to blend sounds together by merging the individual sounds together  until they can hear what the word is. This is a vital reading skill.

  • Segmenting

Segmenting is the opposite of blending! Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This is a vital spelling skill.

 

How do we teach phonics at Boarshaw Primary School?

At Boarshaw we use Rocket Phonics which is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme published by the Department of Education.  It aims to build children’s speaking and listening skills as well as prepare them for learning to read by developing their phonics knowledge and skills.  We teach whole-class phonics for 30 minutes each day.  Each phonics session allows pupils to develop their knowledge of reading, comprehension, spelling and handwriting. Reading books are carefully matched to where pupils are working and only include graphemes they have already covered. 

Parents can find out more about Rocket phonics in our handy parent guide below. 

The Phonics Screening Check

The Phonics Screening Check was introduced by the Government in 2012 and it is statutory to administer this to Year 1 pupils in June of each academic year. The check is taken individually by pupils and is designed to give information on how children are progressing with their early reading skills. The check consists of 40 words (20 real words and 20 pseudo words) and will take 5-10 minutes to complete. During the check pupils read the words and results are shared with parents at the end of summer term. 

 

To find out more about reading at Boarshaw Primary, as well as our School Library and new Reading zones, visit our reading webpage.