English – Phonics

At Penshurst CE Primary School, we are dedicated to ensuring that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1. We believe this is achievable through a combination of high quality, discrete systematic phonic teaching and children being exposed to a language rich curriculum that promotes reading in all curriculum subjects, and for pleasure.

We teach phonics through our own, personalised ‘Penshurst CE Primary School: systematic, synthetic phonics programme’ which has been written by us, for our children. It broadly follows the teaching sequence of Letters and Sounds until Phase 5, where we have adapted the teaching sequence to better suit our children and to ensure that decodable books can be matched throughout Key Stage 1. We start phonics quickly in Reception with children recapping the skills of Phase 1, and then swiftly moving into the first sets of letter sounds. Our rigorous and ambitious phonics programme ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell and they move through the school. The have engaging and carefully selected resources to support them throughout, which remain consistent across all classes to ensure consistency of approach. We also continuously model the ‘real-world’ application of the learning in their phonics lessons, through shared reading and writing in other curriculum areas and through their play.

• Phonics Progression Map
• Phonics Policy

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