Phonics and Early Reading

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.

Fundamental Concepts of Rocket Phonics

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

What does this mean for your child?

In their 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.

Parent Information