Phonics at Kingshill
Phonics is an essential strategy for learning to decode words and our aim is to ensure all children at Kingshill 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. We believe that it is everyone’s responsibility to teach children to read. Phonics also teaches children to spell by segmenting words into their phonemes. At Kingshill, we recognise that phonics and spelling are intertwined. Therefore, phonics is present in all year groups across the curriculum if appropriate.

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).

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.

Phonics and Reading

Phonics Progression

Actions Images and Handwriting – Phase 2

Actions Images and Handwriting – Phase 3

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.

Year 1 Common Exception Words

Year 2 Common Exception Words

Year 3 Common Exception Words

Year 4 Common Exception Words

Year 5 Common Exception Words

Year 6 Common Exception Words

Speeling Shed

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