Phonics & Reading

At Brize Norton Primary, we believe that it is essential that all children become confident, successful, fluent readers. We endeavour to foster a love of reading throughout the school starting from our earliest readers through building confidence and engagement. From Reception we develop competence in word reading; promote and develop language comprehension; and ensure that throughout their time at Brize Norton Primary children experience a range of high-quality texts leading to a strong reading culture. We believe in the importance of teaching children systematic synthetic phonics as a firm foundation for reading. Being able to read most words ‘at a glance’, supports children in being free to focus on the meaning of what has been read.

We use Rocket Phonics as our SSP programme and this progresses from our Reception class until the end of Year 1. In Year 2 we use the Rocket Phonics Next Steps to ensure all children are secure in their phonic knowledge. We teach phonics in year groups, rather than classes, with booster groups for those children who need extra support. This means that all children are exposed to GPCs at the same time and children who need extra interventions are quickly identified.

Phonics is taught by teachers, Higher Level teaching partners and teaching partners; all staff have received training on how to teach phonics. It is taught daily each morning in Reception for 20 mins at the beginning of the year and increases to 30 mins with reading and writing groups as an extra some days. It is also taught daily in year 1 and year 2 for 30 minutes.

Our SSP starts at the beginning of Reception and children learn the first few GPCs within their first weeks of school. Children are taught as a whole class and within Reception and we expect all children to have a secure knowledge of Sets 1 and 2 with most children secure in more complex blending such as CCVC or CVCC words. Children will then be ready to start learning and applying alternative GPCs and develop their confidence in using them independently throughout the curriculum. Children progress through the different sets of GPCs looking at 2 a week to ensure that the children develop a secure knowledge of both blending and segmenting. During Rocket Phonics Next Steps the children revise previously taught GPCs alongside learning other spelling patterns.

Each phonics lesson follows a Review, Teach, Practise and Apply sequence. This ensures that children are familiar with the routine each day and also means that the lessons are fast paced and engaging for the children. - All children are expected to engage and participate fully with each section of the lesson. Activities are planned so that all children can participate and are challenged where necessary.