Killinghall Primary School

At Killinghall, phonics begins in Nursery. Teachers deliver a range of general sound discrimination activities and games that focus on using environmental sounds to develop the oracy and  listening skills of all our children. Children are taught about rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and voice sounds. By the end of nursery, children will have experienced a wealth of listening activities including songs, stories and rhymes. They will be able to distinguish between speech sounds and many will be able to blend and segment words orally. Many will also be able to recognise spoken words that rhyme and will be able to provide a string of rhyming words. Some children will be ready to start learning synthetic phonics and will move on to our next aspect of phonic teaching: Read, Write Inc.

Read, Write, Inc. is a systematic phonics programme designed to teach children to:

• Learn to read and write the 44 phonemes in the English Language
• Read using sound blending
• Write words by saying the sounds and graphemes
• Read some short, simple ditties and then quickly progress to reading the storybooks – this includes developing comprehension skills.

Reception, Year 1 and Year 2

Children are assessed continuously and grouped in ability for a 30-minute (EYFS) and 50-minute (KS1) daily, discreet phonics lesson.

The lesson structure comprises of:

• Learning a new sound (see the order in the table below)
• Revision of previous sounds
• Practising letter formation / spelling of words
• Blending and segmenting
• Reading passages/texts

Children are taught the speed sounds throughout EYFS and KS1. It is expected that the children will learn set 1 sounds by the end of Nursery, and by the end of Reception children should be able to read and spell with set 2 sounds. In addition to this it is expected that Year 1 children by the end of the year learn to read and spell with set 3 phonic sounds. Year 2 children will consolidate and revise all the sounds and will move from  phonics for reading into phonics for spelling and will continue to learn new complex spelling patterns to support writing. Spelling teaching continues throughout Key Stage 2.The speed sounds have been listed below for your information. Set 2 and 3 sounds have rhymes that help the children to remember them quickly.

It is very important that the children pronounce each sound/phoneme correctly. The correct pronunciation of each phoneme (sound) can be found here in the videos below.

Children are expected to use and apply their knowledge from the Read Write Inc. sessions in a variety of contexts throughout the day. Opportunities to do this are provided in continuous provision, planned outdoor activities and further word and spelling work in Year 2.

From Reception, children also take two reading books home everyday and a library book every week. Adults in school listen to children read twice a week throughout Reception and Key Stage 1 to support the application of phonics and our Learning to Read culture.

Children are taught to read and spell common exception words throughout Reception and Key Stage 1, these are also referred to as ‘red tricky words’. It is expected that each child should be able to read and spell the common exception words for their year group. These words have been listed below. 

If parents or carers would like any further information about phonics, reading or spelling, we ask that they speak to their child’s class teacher. We ask all our parents to help provide the best for their children by reading with them every night at home.