At Queensbridge Primary School, phonics is taught daily and very effectively from Nursery through to Year 2, using an adapted version of the DFE accredited programme ‘The Code’ (The Queensbridge Code).

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  Children are supported to understand the purpose of learning phonics, to apply their developing skills within the lesson and also in interesting and engaging literacy lessons.

The format of each lesson is as follows 

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•  a recap on why we learn ‘the code’

•  revision (knowledge & skill of segmenting & blending)

• learning a new sound

• practicing the sound 

• applying this new knowledge in reading or writing. 

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  Phonically decodable books are carefully selected for the consolidation and application of this knowledge.  Tricky (non- decodable words) are also taught as part of each lesson.

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  Children are regularly assessed on their knowledge and ability to segment and blend words using ‘The Phonics Phase Assessment’ that is aligned to the sequence of teaching in ‘The Code’.

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There is a national Phonics Check for Year 1 in the Summer Term *1.    

All children will be assessed on their ability to decode 40 real and pseudo words (alien words) and the results are made available to the parents.

 

​  Children who do not reach the required pass will be required to repeat the Phonics Check in Year 2 Summer Term. These children along with any children who continue to struggle will receive additional support in Year 2 and Key Stage 2 if necessary.

  Children who continue to struggle with word reading receive additional support

​ in Key Stage 2.

 

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Parents and Phonics

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​Glossary of terms used: (thanks to the literacy trust)

​blend — to draw individual sounds together to pronounce a word, e.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap

segment  — to split up a word into its individual phonemes in order to spell it, e.g. the word ‘cat’ has three phonemes: /c/, /a/, /t/

digraph — two letters making one sound, e.g. sh, ch, th, ph.

vowel digraphs comprise of two vowels which, together, make one sound, e.g. ai, oo, ow

split digraph — two letters, split, making one sound, e.g. a-e as in make or i-e in site

grapheme — a letter or a group of letters representing one sound, e.g. sh, ch, igh, ough (as in ‘though’)

grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) — the relationship between sounds and the letters which represent those sounds; also known as ‘letter-sound correspondences’

mnemonic — a device for memorising and recalling something, such as a snake shaped like the letter ‘S’

phoneme — the smallest single identifiable sound, e.g. the letters ‘sh’ represent just one sound, but ‘sp’ represents two (/s/ and /p/)

VC, CVC, CCVC — the abbreviations for vowel-consonant, consonant-vowel-consonant, consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant, which are used to describe the order of letters in words, e.g. am, ham, slam.