Phonics
At Croxby, we love reading and believe phonics is crucial to develop and secure early reading skills. Phonics is taught using Bug Club Phonics, which is one of the DfE’s approved phonics teaching programmes and aims to help all children to read by the age of six in a fun and accessible way. Following its own proven progression, the programme matches the National Curriculum and Early Learning Goals.
Phonic sessions take place everyday using a whole class approach, for 20 minutes in EYFS and 30 minutes in Key Stage 1. Daily intervention groups ensure that children who need further support to keep up, receive it. The Phonic Phase Plan for EYFS to Year 2 can be found by clicking on the link below. The aim is that children will be capable of reading fluently and spelling accurately by the end of Year 2. In Key Stage 2 phonics continues to be taught implicitly through the daily spelling activity, as well as a revision of previously taught sounds every afternoon.
Videos of the sounds taught in each phase and resources to support each phase can be found by clicking on the phase links.
Reading Books in EYFS and Key Stage 1 are chosen to match their current phonic ability, so children can apply their phonics knowledge acquisition in their reading. Below is a link to external site which provides a video explaining all about the teaching of phonics.
All you need to know about phonics - Pearson - YouTube
The school also follows the Bug Club Phonics programme to support early reading. Bug Club is a finely-levelled reading scheme, which ensures that all children can find books at exactly the right level for them. Every book is matched to their current phonic phase which assists with becoming a fluent reader. What’s more, there are online versions for every printed title and a personalised website for each child.
Phonics knowledge is progressive through EYFS and KS1. Follow the link below to view our long-term plan. This shows the progression through each year group. It provides information on the phonemes children are taught and links the phonetically decodable books to each unit of learning.
Follow the link below to see the focus of each phase of phonics and an example of words children will be learning to read and write.
Phonics Glossary
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blending |
Blending is the skill of joining sounds together to read words. Children are taught to say the separate sounds in a word and to then blend them together to decode the word. |
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digraph |
A digraph is a sound that is represented by two letters e.g. the sound 'a' in rain is represented by the digraph 'ai'. |
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trigraph |
A trigraph is a sound that is represented by three letters e.g. the sound 'i' in light is represented by the trigraph 'igh'. |
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grapheme |
A grapheme is a visual representation of a sound e.g. a letter or a group of letters. Some sounds are represented by a single letter whilst others are represented by more than one letter. |
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phoneme |
A phoneme is a unit of sound e.g. the word 'cat' contains three phonemes; c - a - t. |
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segmenting |
Segmenting is the opposite of blending. Children are taught to segment a word into its separate sounds in order to spell it. |
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split digraph |
A split digraph is a digraph that is separated by other letters e.g. the sound 'a' in the word take is represented by the split digraph a-e. |
Year 1 Phonics Screening Results
| 2018 | 2019 | 2023 | |
| Yr 1 Phonics Screening Pass % | 93% | 88% | 87% |