Hordle CE (VA) Primary School & Nursery

We passionately believe that reading will open the door to learning.

At Hordle Primary School we are committed to the delivery of excellence in the teaching of Phonics. We have high aspirations for all our pupils in reading and it is our aim to ensure they can read with fluency as well as develop a love of reading that will allow them to live life in all its fullness. 

INTENT

The school follows the government validated Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme “Read Write Inc” which is designed to ensure progress for every child. Pupils are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds) and blending skills to enable them to decode and read words. 

The scheme teaches the sounds in a systematic order which allows them to quickly begin to put sounds together to read words. For example, many words can be created from the letters MASDT, whereas very few could be built using the initial letters of the alphabet ABCDE.

Pupils are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading, but are also taught high frequency words which do not completely follow the phonic rules.

IMPLEMENTATION

NURSERY (AGES 2+)                                                                                                       .

In Nursery our phonics sessions have an emphasis on hearing and identifying sounds. Children learn to tune into a range of sounds (environmental and instrumental) and blend and segment simple words.

Some of our favourite games include:

• A listening walk – what sounds can I hear?
• Exploring the sounds we can make with our bodies
• Joining in with a rhyming story, such as Oi Frog by kes Gray and Shark in the Park by Nick Sharrat
• Learning nursery rhymes off by heart

RECEPTION                                                                                                      .

In Year R children learn sounds from set one and set two. These are taught in a specific order (see below), gradually building on the phonemes secured to support children in independently blending and decoding words. 

SPEED SOUND SET ONE

EXAMPLE SPEED SOUND SET 1 LESSON

SPEED SOUND SET TWO

EXAMPLE SPEED SOUND SET 2 LESSON – DAY ONE

EXAMPLE SPEED SOUND SET 2 LESSON  – DAY TWO

Year One                                                                                                          .

In Year 1 children recap set two and learn set three sounds.

SPEED SOUND SET THREE

EXAMPLE SPEED SOUND SET 3 LESSON

HOME SCHOOL LINKS

Parent Support

Across the Foundation Stage, the team has developed a wide range of home-learning experiences which encourage adults to talk with children about the world around them and enjoy stories, rhymes, poems and songs. This provides children with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, giving children the opportunity to thrive. 

Some of the home-learning activities include:

• progressively challenging nursery rhymes
• bedtime story book library
• new word of the day challenge
• oral storytelling

In Year R and Year 1, parents are invited to phonics SPLAT sessions (Stay, Play and Learn All Together). During these well-attended sessions, parents are shown how phonics lessons are delivered in school and given practical advice on how best to support their children at home. 

Reading Records

In Reception and Key Stage One, families record their engagement with reading by completing a school reading record. This initiative has been specifically designed to motivate pupils and support families. Age-appropriate recommended reads, including non-fiction and poetry, are signposted to families and these books are available to borrow from the school library. Children are rewarded for reading by earning BOOST points for developing reading habits.

Reading Books

We are passionate that children become confident readers who take pleasure in reading a range of genres. In order to achieve this, children, who are still on the RWI phonics scheme, take home two weeks each week. Firstly, there is one book to develop fluency: this is a RWi BOOK BAG BOOK which is fully-decodable and matched to their phonic ability. The second book is designed to develop enjoyment of reading: this is a book chosen by the child from a banded selection. 

Glossary of Phonics Terms

Here are some technical terms your child might begin to learn at home:

• Phoneme – Phonemes are the smallest unit of speech – sounds which make up a word.  If you change a phoneme in a word, you would change its meaning. For example, there are three phonemes in the word sit /s/-/i/-/t/. If you change the phoneme /s/ for /f/, you have a new word, fit. If you change the phoneme /t/ in fit for a /sh/, you have a new word, fish – /f/-/i/-/sh/.
• Grapheme – Graphemes are the written representation of sounds – the letters.
• Digraph – A grapheme containing 2 letters that makes just one sound, eg /sh/ in shop or /ch/ in chip.
• Trigraph – A grapheme containing 3 letters that makes just one sound, eg /air/ in pair or /igh/ in night.
• Split Digraph – A grapheme containing 2 letters but are separated by another sound, eg ‘ae’ in make is separated by the sound /k/ so it is split /a-e/.
• Blend – The process of putting individual sounds together to read a word, eg sh–o-p, shop.
• Fred Talk/Segment – The process of breaking a word into individual sounds to spell a word.
• Sound Buttons – Teachers might use these under words to indicate whether the sound is a single letter sound (dot) or a digraph/trigraph (dash) to help children to blend the sounds correctly in the word, eg shop.

IMPACT

Through the consistent, systematic and daily teaching of the Read Write Inc Phonics programme, our aim is for children to become fluent, confident readers who accurately understand the books they read by the end of Key Stage One. 

Teacher Assessment                                                                                                        .

Assessment plays a pivotal role in the Read Write Inc phonics programme. All children are assessed on a regular basis by a familiar adult in order to closely monitor progress. There is a focus on recognising taught phonemes and tracking children’s abilities to apply their decoding skills. The outcome of these assessments determines pupils’ RWI groupings. 

In addition, during Book Lessons – reading lessons with fully-decodable books matched to pupils’ phonic abilities – staff monitor the application of decoding skills when reading whole texts. 

Any pupils who are identified as making less than expected progress receive an intervention. 

Year One                                                                                                     .

Children are assessed at the end of Year 1 using a Government Statutory Assessment Tool known as the Phonics Screening Check. This screening check confirms whether the child has learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard and will identify sounds needing further support in Year 2. The children are assessed one to one by an adult who is familiar to them. Those who do not pass the screening check will continue their phonics lessons in Year 2 . This allows consolidation of sounds and the chance to develop their confidence, within a group aimed at their specific ability, ready to retake the screening check at the end of Year 2. 

‘Reading for pleasure is the single biggest factor in success later in life, outside of an education. Study after study has shown that those children who read for pleasure are the ones who are most likely to fulfil their ambitions. If your child reads, they will succeed – it’s that simple.’

Bali Rai

The staff and Governors take great pride in providing for and delivering a rich, balanced and engaging curriculum which is relevant to our pupils and the future world they will encounter. In keeping with our Christian Vision – we make every effort to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their needs, irrespective of gender, ability or ethnic origin – can enjoy a ‘Life in all its Fullness’. The curriculum is carefully and thoughtfully designed to avoid stereotypes and provides good role models for all pupils. We seek to ensure that the curriculum is not delivered in a discriminatory way. For example:

• Children from all ethnic backgrounds are called upon to express their views in class
• Girls and boys have equal access to all areas of the curriculum including sport
• When curriculum policies are reviewed due regard is given to equal opportunity implications.

Tracking pupil progress

We aim to ensure that all barriers to learning are removed for all our pupils, especially those with protected characteristics. To achieve this we:

• Track the progress of pupils by analysing data by race, gender and disability
• Track the progress of all our pupils by regularly analysing data
• Carry out termly assessments of all our pupils in maths, reading, writing and GPS
• Set and monitor targets for English and maths

In relation to SEND pupils, the governors will make reasonable adjustments to avoid disadvantage to a disabled pupil. When considering adjustments, the governors will take into account the circumstances of each case including a thorough risk assessment. Factors which the governors will consider include: the financial, personnel or other resources required for the adjustment, its effectiveness, its effect on other pupils, health and safety requirements and whether aids have been made available through the Special Educational Needs route. For more information about provision for SEND pupils – please view the SEND report here