Intent- Reading for Fluency and Phonics at Parkfield

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go.”— Dr. Seuss, “I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!”

Recent research to inform practice:

The recent findings from ‘Telling the story: the English education subject report, 2024 indicates that there is an increased emphasis on reading (through government policy and Ofsted’s focus on how well schools teach pupils to read) has helped leaders to understand the importance of teaching systematic synthetic phonics. Compared with their findings in previous reports, this represents an overwhelmingly positive shift towards having all children reading by the end of key stage 1. However, over 1 in 4 pupils still move to secondary school without having met the expected standard in the key stage 2 national reading test. (Key stage 2 attainment, Explore education statistics, September 2023). This hinders them in secondary school, both in English and more widely across the curriculum.

The EEF KS1 2021 states: Systematic phonics approaches explicitly teach pupils a comprehensive set of letter-sound relationships for reading and sound-letter relationships for spelling. • Consider the following when teaching a phonics programme: — Training: ensure all staff have the necessary pedagogical skills and content knowledge. — Responsiveness: check if learning can be accelerated or extra support is needed and identify specific capabilities and difficulties to focus teaching. — Engagement: lessons engage pupils and are enjoyable to teach. — Adaptations: carefully consider the potential impact of adaptations to the programme. — Focus: a responsive approach to grouping pupils is likely to help focus effort and improve teaching efficiency. Furthermore, The EEF KS2 2021 states, Fluent reading supports comprehension because pupils’ cognitive resources can be redirected from focusing on word recognition to comprehending the text. • Develop pupils’ fluency through: — guided oral reading instruction—teachers model fluent reading, then pupils read the same text aloud with appropriate feedback; and — repeated reading— pupils re-read a short and meaningful passage a set number of times or until they reach a suitable level of fluency. • Prioritise understanding pupils’ current capabilities and teaching accordingly. Most pupils benefit from an emphasis on reading fluency in Key Stage 2 but some may continue to need support with foundational reading capabilities such as decoding.

At Parkfield Primary School, all pupils are encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction texts to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. We believe that reading feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious young minds. It is therefore our aim to enable children to become confident, successful readers and to gain love and enjoyment from a wide range of literature.

English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them.

Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.

All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society: pupils, therefore, who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.

It is essential that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

The national curriculum states that:

The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing in which words are broken up into their smallest units of sound or ‘phonemes’. Children learn to associate a written letter or group of letters, known as ‘graphemes’, with each phoneme. Sounds are then built up or ‘blended’ together into words for reading or, conversely, whole words are broken down or ‘segmented’ into their constituent sounds for writing.

The benefits of this approach are:

• children learn in an order which is well thought-out and allows them to progress through stages as they are ready;

• teachers have a structure for planning and clear stages for assessing children, in order to ensure progression and coverage;

• children can attempt new words working from sound alone;

• reading and writing become practices that are developed hand-in-hand.

There are four key elements that children need to master in order to read and write fluently:

 • Rapid recall of GPCs

• Rapid recall of tricky/common exception words

• Efficient blending skills

• Efficient segmenting skills

The four skills represent the cornerstones of phonics and must be practised every day to ensure children make the expected progress.

The Twinkl Phonics Programme intends to not only provide children with opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding essential for reading and writing, but also, to develop each child’s confidence, resilience and engagement in phonics lessons and a love for reading and writing.

Implementation

The Twinkl Phonics Programme offers a coherently planned sequence of lessons that supports the effective teaching of phonics within EYFS, KS1 and, where appropriate, KS2.

We deliver daily lessons from 9-9:30 and have a ‘stage not age approach’ to ensure we use our staff effectively and provide equity to all our pupils who need to learn vital decoding skills.

Level 1 Twinkl Phonics provides themed teaching packs for nurseries and preschool providers to deliver each of the DfE’s Phase 1 phonics aspects. Throughout Level 1, young learners develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to discriminate between and use auditory, environmental and instrumental sounds. Level 1 is taught in the EYFS and runs throughout the teaching of phonics Levels 2-6.

In reception, children work within Levels 2-4. The total number of teaching weeks for Levels 2, 3 and 4 do not fill the whole academic year. This has been planned to allow for additional consolidation if required, assessment time and it also takes into account the events that take place throughout the year such as Christmas productions, school trips etc. In Levels 2-4, learners are introduced to phonemes/sounds and graphemes/letters systematically. They also learn to develop and apply blending and segmenting skills for reading and writing.

In KS1, children work within Levels 5 and 6. The coherently planned sequence of lessons within Level 5 allows opportunities for children to apply their phonics knowledge and skills as the prime approach to reading and spelling. It focuses on phonetically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words and the alternative ways of pronouncing and representing the long vowel phonemes. Furthermore, children will develop their ability to attempt to read and spell increasingly complex words. During Level 6, children explore spelling patterns and grammar while also developing a breadth of knowledge, skills and understanding in the recognition and spelling of common exception words.

We understand that not all children progress at the same rate so we bridge this gap. For those children who are working below age related expectations, phonics learning doesn’t end in KS1.

If, through assessment and observation, teachers decide that a child needs further phonics intervention we have catch up sessions in the afternoon 1:30-1:45.

Pure Sounds

When introducing children to the first 44 GPCs, it is important to use ‘pure sounds’. ‘Pure sounds’ refers to the way of sounding phonemes without adding an extra ‘uh’, known as a schwa, at the end of each letter. Using pure sounds helps children to blend sounds for reading and segment words for writing, as no extra sounds are accidentally inserted into words. For example: • /s/ is pronounced as ‘sss’ instead of ‘suh’. • /t/ is pronounced as a very short bouncy sound instead of ‘tuh’.

Blending

Blending is the process of saying each individual phoneme that appears in a written word and then running the phonemes together to hear and say the word. For the process of blending to be as smooth and effective as possible, pure sounds must be used. Secure, rapid recall of individual letter sounds, digraphs and trigraphs is crucial to enable children to blend words effectively.

Segmenting

Segmenting is the process of breaking down a word into the individual phonemes in order to correctly spell the word. Children listen to, and identify, the phonemes in a word and then choose the correct grapheme or graphemes to represent them. Encourage children to hold up their fingers as they hear each phoneme and to take particular care when choosing the GPCs to represent long vowel digraphs and trigraphs or adjacent consonants. Adjacent consonants, such as ‘br’, ‘st’ or ‘cl’, can be segmented into their separate letter sounds as both sounds can be heard individually.

Tricky & Common Exception Words

There are parts of some very common words in the English language that are not phonetically decodable. Some examples of these are ‘to’, ‘the’ and ‘said’. Due to the frequency and usefulness of these common words, it is necessary to introduce them as ‘tricky’ or ‘common exception’ words at the earliest stages. By introducing these words as a unique group that do not follow the usual phonics rules, it allows children to access a greater range of sentences for both reading and writing and to begin to build a bank of sight vocabulary. Common exception words are introduced first as reading sight vocabulary and then are reintroduced later as spelling words.

When introducing and teaching new tricky (common exception) words for reading and spelling, Twinkl Phonics recommends using the suggested language and steps laid out on these pages. This approach supports children to identify the decodable and non-decodable parts of a word and helps them to make links between non-decodable spelling patterns; it assists them to recognise tricky words by sight and attain rapid recall. When learning tricky words for spelling, Step 6 supports children to memorise the spelling of each word. This step-by-step process can be found in the lesson PowerPoints where new tricky (common exception) words are introduced and taught.

Letter Formation

In Levels 2-6 of Twinkl Phonics, letter formation is embedded into every lesson. As children are introduced to each letter of the alphabet in Levels 2 and 3, an opportunity to practise letter formation is built into the teach section. A letter formation rhyme linked to the mnemonic is introduced and an animated ‘magic pencil’ models the correct letter formation. In Level 3, children continue to practise their letter formation when digraphs and trigraphs are introduced. Here, the grapheme mnemonics are included to prompt recall of the previously taught letter formation.

Introducing Capital Letters Twinkl Phonics teaches each capital letter alongside its corresponding lower-case letter. Throughout the whole of Level 2 and in weeks 1 and 2 of Level 3, as each new single-letter GPC is taught, children are introduced to the corresponding capital letter and are guided through the correct letter formation. Each capital letter teaching slide includes a magic pencil demonstration of the letter formation and a patter to prompt correct capital letter formation. This early introduction enables children to make vital links between capital and lower-case letters. They will develop an understanding that the lowercase and capital letter have the same name and represent the same sound, e.g. ‘t’ and ‘T’ are called the letter /tee/ and make the /t/ sound. 

Minibooks

Each week of Twinkl Phonics Levels 2-6 comes with two fully decodable minibooks, which are focused on the new sound(s) the children have learnt that week, making them perfect for children applying their newly learnt GPC recognition and decoding skills. We use these stories as part of Lesson 5 each week to consolidate and apply the children’s learning. They can also be used in guided reading sessions, as take-home books or in subsequent weeks for continued reading practice.

Workbooks

There are also weekly pupil workbooks, which all contain an extended read and other reading activities. These increase in length and complexity through the levels, giving children an opportunity to read a sustained text as part of their phonics lesson. The activities in the workbooks are designed so that once the routines are embedded, children can complete them independently.

Reading Books

The books that children read as part of a reading scheme are fully decodable. We have ensured that our books are aligned with Twinkl’s phonics screen, where we currently use:

EYFS: Bug Club: Alphablocks & Bug Club, Oxford Reading Tree: Letters & Sounds and Oxford Reading Tree: Floppy Phonics Sound Specific Books.

KS1: Book stock consists of:

Phase 1-4Oxford Reading Tree: Floppy Phonics; Comics for Phonics; Songbirds

Phase 5 onwards: as above and Bug Club & Bug Club Alphablocks and Oxford Reading Tree- Letters & Sounds

From Turquoise: As above and Big Cat, Rising Stars Reading Plant, Rigby Star, Project X, Engage Literacy, Usbourne Books & Maverick Early Reader.

Useful vocabulary

Phoneme: the smallest unit of sound in a word.

Grapheme: the letter or group of letters that represent a sound i.e. what the sound looks like written down.

Diagraph: two letters that work together to make one sound (ee).

Trigraph: three letters that work together to make one sound (igh).

Segmenting: breaking a word into individual sounds.

Blending: putting the sounds together to make words. 

Decode: apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words.

Tricky words (common exception words): words that are not decodable at the child’s current phonic level of understanding. The only way these words can be read and spelt correctly is by learning them and having plenty of practise.

Decodable words: Words which can be read by using phonemes and blending.

Assessment

How is reading assessed?

We use both formative and summative approaches to assess reading- this could be through 1:1 reading, phonics or guided reading sessions. 

Phonics is assessed after each phase, focussing on the key skills of blending and segmenting. These assessments are put onto a class grid, where gaps can be identified and interventions can be swiftly put in place to ensure children progress. These assessments also inform future planning. A copy of all assessments are given to the Phonics Subject Lead to monitor.

Statutory Assessments

EYFS Assessments

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) profile summarises and describes children’s attainment at the end of the EYFS.

It gives:

• • the child’s attainment in relation to the 17 early learning goal (ELG) descriptors
  • a short narrative describing the child’s 3 characteristics of effective learning Teachers’ assessments are primarily based on observing a child’s daily activities and events.

In particular, practitioners note the learning that a child demonstrates spontaneously, independently and consistently in a range of contexts. On-going assessment is an integral part of the learning and development process. It involves teachers observing children to understand their level of attainment, interests and learning styles, and to then shape learning experiences for each child reflecting those observations.

When compiling the profile, teachers must review the evidence gathered in order to make a judgement for each child and for each ELG.

The judgement must say whether the child’s learning and development is:

• • best described by the level of development expected at the end of the EYFS (‘expected’)
  • not yet at the level of development expected at the end of the EYFS (‘emerging’)

Year 1 Phonics Screening

All children will take a part in the Year 1 Phonics Screening test, which is in June every year. Children who do not pass the test will have another opportunity to take the test in Year 2. Any child who doesn’t pass in Year 1 and 2 will have extra phonics intervention to try and diminish the difference.

What is the phonics screening check?

In Year 1, each child will do the phonics screening check, which is a quick and easy check of your child’s phonics knowledge. It helps your school confirm whether your child has made the expected progress.

How does the check work? 

Your child will sit with a teacher he or she knows and be asked to read 40 words aloud.  Your child may have read some of the words before, while others will be completely new. The check normally takes just a few minutes to complete and there is no time limit. If your child is struggling, the teacher will stop the check. The check is carefully designed not to be stressful for your child.

What are ‘non-words’? 

The check will contain a mix of real words and ‘non-words’ (or ‘nonsense words’). Your child will be told before the check that there will be non-words that he or she will not have seen before. The children will be familiar with this because we already use ‘non-words’ when we teach phonics. Non-words are important to include because words such as ‘vap’ or ‘jound’ are new to all children. Children cannot read the non-words by using their memory or vocabulary; they have to use their decoding skills. This is a fair way to assess their ability to decode. After the check we will inform you about your child’s progress in phonics and how he or she has done in the screening check in the last half-term of year 1. Children who have not met the standard in year 1 will retake the check in year 2. All children are individuals and develop at different rates. The screening check ensures that teachers understand which children need extra help with phonic decoding.

End of Key Stage 1 Assessments

Throughout the month of May, Year 2 pupils are can participate in the optional KS1 reading tests, which consist of:

• English reading Paper 1: combined reading prompt and answer booklet

• English reading Paper 2: reading booklet and reading answer booklet.

In order for a child to reach age related expectation, they need to read 90 words per minute- gold level- fluently.

End of Key Stage 2 Assessments

At the end of Key Stage 2 (Year 6), pupils are required to participate in SATS tests during a specified week in May, which include:

A reading answer booklet and a separate reading booklet.

(Pupils will have a total of 1 hour to read the 3 texts in the reading booklet and complete the questions at their own pace.)

There is an expectation that children can read fluently and for speed in order to be able to answer questions from three different texts,

Cultural Capital

We pride ourselves on providing equality and equity and understand that all children have different starting points and needs. We are aware of our lowest 20%, where they take part in daily, highly structured interventions following the Twinkl phonics programme, which will normally include recapping or re-learning missing GPCs and tricky/ common exception words, as well as practising blending and segmenting skills. We have a stage not age approach so children who need to learn or revisit phonics can learn the vital skills they need to be able to decode.

SEND

We understand that not all children learn phonetically so we have other strategies to support decoding- we use widget symbol writer to create common exception words with visuals to support sight reading. For children who find decoding challenging we have purchased Barrington Stoke books to support children with dyslexia. We model fluency – through reading aloud to children, sharing stories/non fiction/poetry. In addition to our book scheme, we have Jelly & Bean books to support decoding with limited words and pictures.  

Intent

By the end of their time at Parkfield, as readers, the children will be:

• Successful learners who read easily, fluently and with good understanding across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live.
• Confident individuals who develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information and appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage.
• Responsible citizens who have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.