How we teach phonics at Highfield Primary School

At Highfield Primary School we teach phonics through the Department for Education’s validated systematic synthetic phonics teaching programme: ‘Twinkl Phonics’.

Phonics is a method of teaching children to read and write by blending and segmenting individual sounds (phonemes). Every letter and different combinations of letters make particular sounds (phonemes).

Children throughout Nursery, Reception and Key stage 1 take part in daily phonics sessions.

In Nursery these sessions focus on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lay the foundations necessary for the development of their future phonics’ knowledge. They listen to different types of sounds and learn to tell the difference between them by exploring and experimenting. Through this exploration they learn to distinguish between different sounds in the environment, show an awareness of rhyme and alliteration (words that start with the same sound), learn how to sound simple words out (segment) and blend sounds together to make a word.

In Reception and KS1 these sessions focus on key reading skills such as decoding to read words and segmenting the sounds in a given word to spell. During Phonics lessons we also teach children to

read and write ‘tricky words’ also known as ‘sight words.’ These are words that cannot be decoded by sounding out the phonemes. They are words that are learnt by being committed to memory.

The phonics sessions also develop vocabulary by ensuring words are given a context and visual aids are provided to promote understanding of new language. When we revisit sounds (phonemes),

words get progressively more challenging in order to continuously expand our children’s vocabulary.

In KS2, phonics sessions continue to be delivered to some children in order to further develop their reading and writing fluency and proficiency.

Please see documents below for further information about how we teach phonics at Highfield Primary School.