Phonics at Kingshill
We are a ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ school.
Phonics is an essential strategy for learning to decode words and our aim is to ensure all children at Kingshill Church School read proficiently and become life-long readers.
Phonics is a key part of this as it enables children to decode automatically over time and become fluent readers. Phonics also teaches children to spell by segmenting words into their phonemes. At Kingshill Church School, we recognise that phonics and spelling are intertwined. Therefore, the use of phonics continues across the school as it supports learners to broaden understanding and develop accuracy.
We use ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ as our SSP Scheme for teaching phonics. SSP stands for Systematic Synthetic Phonics. It is an approach which teaches children to recognise letters (graphemes) and their associated sounds (phonemes). The scheme was validated by the DfE in December 2021.
We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4.
They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.
In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, they learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the graphemes and additional Common Exception Words. By the end of Year 1 children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling.
In Year 1 all children are screened using the national Phonics Screening Check. In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive support to close identified gaps. For further details please see the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression.
To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to keep up through bespoke 1-1 interventions. These include GPC recognition and blending and segmenting interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have an impact.
At Kingshill Church School we promote a ‘phonics first’ approach and in both our guided reading sessions at school and in the books children take home, texts are very closely matched to a child’s current phonics knowledge so that every child can experience real success in their reading.
Please see below the overview of progression in phonics and help for parents with actions and images to support children with their phonics learning at home.
Kingshill Church School ULS Phonics Progression
Actions Images and Handwriting – Phase 2
Actions Images and Handwriting – Phase 3
Handwriting lower case letter formation
Handwriting upper case letter formation
Phonics and Reading support for home
Spellings at Kingshill
Unlocking Letters and Sounds provides daily practice in reading, then spelling the Common Exception Words for the Year groups EYFS -Year 2.
In KS2 the Common Exception word lists are shared with parents at the beginning of the year. Each week children are given a list of words to practice at home and in school each day. Each half term the children will be assessed on the spellings that they have learnt that term. Over the year children will be revisiting the year group list at least 3 times.
Spelling Shed
At Kingshill Church school we use ‘Spelling Shed’ for the Teaching and Learning of Spelling across Key Stage 2 (Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6) and in Year 2 when pupils have secured their Phonics Teaching and Learning.
You and your child will also be able to access what Spelling Shed has to offer at home too.
Click on this link to explore Spelling Shed and what it has to offer both at school and at home.
The teaching of spelling at Kingshill Church School, using Spelling Shed as its core, follows teaching:
Parental Guides:
The documents below will provide assistance with the language used in school which your child is familiar with
We are delighted to let you know that Spelling Shed can be accessed at home for those children who have finished our phonics programme. (Mainly our KS2 children). This will be an excellent resource to use at home to practice class spellings and will become our weekly spelling homework.
The Parent’s Guide below explains how to log in and play the games. The children have been given their login details.
Parent+Guide+for+Spelling+Shed
There is no need to buy the app; the website is the most suitable way to access this resource https://play.edshed.com/en-gb/login