Phonics

Phonics and Early Reading statement

At Bassett Green Primary School, we prioritise the teaching of Phonics and Early Reading. It is vitally important that children have a secure understanding of the letter sounds and spelling system of English. At Bassett Green we aim to provide children with the skills necessary to be able to read confidently and access information throughout the curriculum to ensure that they reach their potential.

We develop phonic skills through using a systematic synthetic phonics programme ‘Rocket Phonics’, which is a DfE validated programme. ‘Rocket Phonics’ supports your child to learn all the skills needed to successfully read, write and spell. It teaches sounds in an order which allows the children to quickly begin to build words. The programme aims to help every child to keep up and not catch up.

Our whole class daily sessions are pacey and follow the structure:

Revisit and review
Teach
Pupil Practice and application

Each day consists of a specific focus:

Day 1 – Sound 1 Blending focus
Day 2 – Sound 1 Segmenting focus
Day 3 – Sound 2 Blending focus
Day 4 - Sound 2 Segmenting focus
Day 5 – Tailored to our children’s needs e.g. consolidation, focus on common exception words, assessment, enrichment

Alongside teaching skills such as blending (putting sounds together to read words) and segmenting (breaking words down to spell them), the children are taught ‘tricky words’ (common exception words). These are words that cannot yet be sounded out as the sounds have not yet been taught, such as ‘was’ or ‘me’.

All children will be provided with a decodable reading book from the Rising Stars: Reading Planet series which fully aligns with Rocket Phonics

What is Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP)?

Systematic Synthetic Phonics is a way of teaching children to read, write and spell. The sounds that children learn are taught in a specific, systematic order (not alphabetically) so that children can begin to build words from these sounds as early as possible. Phonics supports children to hear, identify and link the sounds that letters make (phonemes) to what the letters look like when written down (graphemes). This helps children to recognise and read words, using knowledge of the sounds to read new or unfamiliar words.

What does this mean for your child?

In their Rocket Phonics lessons, your child will learn to recognise, identify, say and read all of the 44 sounds of the English language along with writing and spelling them. They will revisit sounds they have learned, learn new sounds, take part in stimulating activities to practise and apply their reading, writing and spelling skills and contribute to comprehension quizzes to check for understanding.

Mnemonic system

A mnemonic system is a way of helping children to remember letter-sound correspondences. The words for the key pictures are not decodable at the point of introduction – the pictures are serving as a visual and oral mnemonic to help children recall the focus letter-sound.

See attachment below

Fundamental Concepts of Rocket Phonics

Phonics is overseen by a dedicated phonics leader (Nicola Long and Elodie Parker)
Phonics is taught for a minimum of 30 minutes daily
All staff are supported with regular phonics training.
A clear pathway is followed through the alphabetic code.
Children are not asked to read texts by themselves that they can’t yet read.
The Systematic Synthetic Phonics Teaching principles are taught explicitly
The Teaching & Learning Cycle (revisit and review, teach, practise, apply) is followed
Children are supported to keep up, so they do not need to catch up
Phonics is taught at letter-sound, word, sentence and text levels
Core phonics provision is distinguished from phonics enrichment activities
Teachers have clarity about what, why and how they are teaching
Teachers focus on details, such as accurate modelling and pencil hold.

Reception: Rocket Phonics

Half-termly overview

Autumn 1	/s/ as in sun /a/ as in apple /t/ as in tap /i/ as in insect /p/ as in pan /n/ as in net	/m/ as in mouse /d/ as in dog /g/ as in goat /o/ as in octopus /k/ as in cat /k/ as in kite
	I, the, go, to, no, into
Autumn 2	/k/ as in duck /e/ as in elephant /u/ as in umbrella /r/ as in rabbit /h/ as in hat /b/ as in bat	/f/ as in frog and cliff /l/ as in ladder /l/ as in shell /s/ as in dress Double consonant letters Two syllable words
	I, the, go, to, no, into
Spring 1	/j/ as in jug /v/ as in van /w/ as in web /k+s/ as in fox /y/ as in yellow /z/ as in zebra and fizzy	/z/ as in bugs /k+w/ as in queen Consolidation
	he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are
Spring 2	/ch/ as in chick /sh/ as in sheep /th/ as in thumb and feather short /n+g/ as in ring /ai/ as in train /ee/ as in bee	/igh/ as in light /oa/ as in boat /oo/ as in book long /oo/ as in moon Consolidation
	he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are
Summer 1	/ar/ as in car /or/ as in fork /ur/ as in purse /ou/ as in owl /oi/ as in coin /eer/ as in ear	/air/ as in chair /y+oor/ as in manure schwa /uh/ as in hammer Consolidation
	some, one, said, come, do, so, were, when, have, there, out, like, little, what
Summer 2	/w/ as in wheel /f/ as in dolphin /ai/ as in crayon /ai/ as in cake /ai/ as in acorn /ee/ as in scene	/ee/ as in shield /ee/ as in peach Consolidation
	some, one, said, come, do, so, were, when, have, there, out, like, little, what

Year 1: Rocket Phonics

Half-termly overview

Autumn 1	/igh/ as in child /igh/ as in time /igh/ as in pie /igh/ as in spy /oa/ as in rope /oa/ as in snow	/oa/ as in toe /oa/ as in piano /ee/ as in happy /ee/ as in key Consolidation
	some, one, said, come, do, so, were, when, have, there, out, like, little, what
Autumn 2	/y+oo/ as in unicorn short /oo/ as in push /y+oo/ as in cube long /oo/ as in flute /y+oo/ as in statue long /oo/ as in blue	/y+oo/ as in news long /oo/ as in screw /ur/ as in herbs /ur/ as in bird /ou/ as in cloud /oi/ as in toy
	oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could, water, where
Spring 1	/or/ as in astronaut /or/ as in strawberry /oa/ as in shoulder long /oo/ as in soup short /oo/ as in should /ar/ as in father and palm /ur/ as in pearl and world	/eer/ as in deer and here /air/ as in square, bear and there /or/ as in ball /or/ as in four /or/ as in core /or/ as in door /or/ as in daughter
	who, again, thought, through, many, laughed, because, any, eyes, friends, once, please
Spring 2	/s/ as in celery /j/ as in giraffe /e/ as in bread /s/ as in house /s/ as in fence /k/ as in school	/sh/ as in chef /j/ as in bridge /j/ as in package /uh/ as in mother Consolidation
	oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could, water, where
Summer 1	/ul/ as in bottle /t/ as in mixed /d/ as in drilled /m/ as in comb /n/ as in knot /n/ as in sign	/r/ as in writing /ch/ as in hatching /zh/ as in treasure, television, collage Consolidation
	oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could, water, where
Summer 2	/ch+u/ as in picture /i/ as in pyramid /s/ as in scissors /s/ as in whistle /o/ as in watch /sh/ as in station	/sh/ as in musician /sh/ as in percussion Consolidation
	who, again, thought, through, many, laughed, because, any, eyes, friends, once, please

Year 2: Rocket Phonics Next Steps

Half-termly overview

Autumn 1

/ai/ ai, ay, a-e, a, eigh, ei, ea, ey

/ee/ ee, e-e, ie, ea, y, ey, e

/igh/ igh, i, i-e, ie, y

/oa/ oa, o-e, ow, oe, o

homophones and near-homophones suffixes

Autumn 2

/w/ w, wh /f/ f, ff, ph

long /oo/ oo, u-e, ou, ue, ew

/y+oo/ u, u-e, ue, ew

short /oo/ oo, u, oul

/ar/ ar, a, al

possessive apostrophes

suffixes

Spring 1

/or/ or, au, aw, al, ar, a

/or/ our, ore, oor, augh

/ur/ ur, er, ir, ear, or

/ou/ ou, ow

/oi/ oi, oy

contractions

suffixes

Spring 2

/eer/ ear, eer, ere

/air/ air, are, ear, ere

/s/ s, ss, c, se, ce, sc, st

/j/ j, g, dge, ge

homophones and near-homophones suffixes

Summer 1

/t/ t, tt, ed

/d/ d, dd, ed

/n/ n, nn, kn, gn

/m/ m, mm, mb

/k/ c, k, ck, ch

/r/ r, rr, wr

/l/ l, ll

/ul/ le, il, al, el

possessive apostrophes

suffixes

Summer 2

/i/ i, y

/o/ o, (w)a (qu)a

/e/ e, ea

/zh/ s, si, ge

/ch/ ch, tch

/ch+u/ ture

/sh/ sh, ch, ti, ci, ssi

contractions

suffixes

Phonics Glossary:

The phonics glossary below includes the main key terms that are useful to know when supporting your child to read using phonics.

Word	Meaning
blending	The process of using phonics for reading. Children identify and blend the individual sounds together to hear and say the whole word.
CVC, CCVC, CVCC	These represent how words are structured. The ‘c’ = consonant and the ‘v’ = vowel. E.g. cat = cvc drip = ccvc milk = cvcc
Common exception word (CEW)	Sometimes called a tricky word, these words have an unusual or tricky spelling, e.g. said, one, their. They are not spelt as they sound.
grapheme	A letter or group of letters representing one sound. A grapheme is what the sound looks like when written down; the letter shape.
phoneme	The sound that a letter or group of letters makes. This may also be referred to as a letter-sound.
segmenting	Using phonics skills to support spelling and writing. Children listen to the whole word and break it up into the letter-sounds. E.g. ‘lunch’ can be segmented as l-u-n-ch.
sound out	Encouraging children to say each individual sound in a word before saying the whole word aloud.