Barncroft Primary School
At Barncroft Primary we follow the phonics sets as set out by the Read, Write Inc phonics programme. This is supported by the use of phonetically decodable books, actions and rhymes. This allows us to give the children a really immersive approach to the teaching of phonics in which they can apply this knowledge into everyday reading and writing with a real focus on blending and segmenting. Children are assessed and split into small phonics groups which run daily and allow our children to receive the support they need in learning to read and write.
When your child enters our reception classes we aim to immerse them in a language rich culture full of stories, rhymes and letter sounds.
They will start in the autumn term by continuing work on their speaking and listening skills laying the foundations for the phonic work which starts with set 1. The emphasis during this stage is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. This will build upon work they will have carried out in Nursery.
They will then start to learn the sounds from set 1, gaining confidence in blending and segmenting these before finishing the year on set 2.
A breakdown of the sets and the tricky words your child will be learning can be found at the bottom of this page.
At the start of reception your child will be sent home with a set of tricky words. Tricky words are those words which either cannot be sounded out or that are above children’s current phonic level. This includes words such as I, my, to, no and go and are taught alongside the phonics provision.
To support your child learning the tricky words, use the cards sent home from school to play games such as snap or use them as flashcards. Practice makes perfect with these words and will really help your child as they move on to reading books.
To support your child learning to read words, encourage them to add the ‘sound buttons’ to the words and to carefully sound them out. Say the sounds closer and closer together until you form the word e.g.             c   – a   –  t,   c – a – t,  cat. Similarly when writing words, encourage your child to sound the word out, writing each letter as they say the sound. In school, they use robot arms to segment the sounds. Ask them to show you!
As they progress through the year, they will be set home with a coloured book. These will progressively increase in terms of the amount of phonics knowledge the children will need in order to read them. In order to find out more about supporting your child with their reading, please speak to their class teacher.
When your child enters Year 1, they will continue to build upon the phonics skills they gained in Reception. They will start by recapping on set 1 and set 2 before moving on to set 3.Â
In set 3, children will learn more graphemes and phonemes. For example, they already know ai as in rain, but now they will be introduced to ay as in day and a-e as in make. Alternative pronunciations for graphemes will also be introduced e.g. ea in tea, head and break.
Read, read, read!
At this stage, most children will be confidently blending and segmenting words. They will be sent home with reading books which reflect the sounds that they have learnt. The more they can practise reading these words at home, the more confident they will become in recognising the different ways we can make the sounds.
If they are struggling with sounding out a word, ask them to use their sound buttons or to see if there are any special friends in a word e.g. in bath the digraph ‘th’ is a special friend. They join together to form a digraph and make the sound ‘th’.
When writing, encourage your child to sound out and to think about which sounds they might need to use. Play games which involve finding things which contain that sound.
At this stage, children should be able to spell words phonemically although not always correctly. The main aim for children at this stage is to become more fluent readers and more accurate spellers. We focus on teaching them the different spelling patterns such as adding –ing to words and what happens when we change words into the past tense.
Most children will now be confident with each of the different phonemes and graphemes and the alternative ways they can be written and pronounced. They will now be sent home with books which contain a wide variety of sounds, suffixes and compound words.
When reading these books with your child, encourage them to sound out unknown words using the skills they have learnt in previous years e.g. sound it out, look for any digraphs or trigraph (any sounds that go together). Encourage them to split up longer words making the parts they need to sound out smaller.
For writing, encourage them to try the different sounds they know if they are unsure of the spelling to see if they can work out which is the correct one to use.
All children learn at different paces and at Barncroft we understand that some children may need a little extra support when it comes to phonics. Through our embedded transition programme between KS1 and KS2 and regular assessments, children who may need extra phonics are identified early and targeted support is put in place either in the form of 1:1 support or small group work. The phonics programme which we use means that we can closely monitor your child’s progress and adapt the teaching to meet the needs of every individual. Your child’s class teacher will speak to you if they feel they would benefit from this support.
If you do have any concerns about your child’s phonics knowledge, please don’t hesitate to contact their class teacher or to speak to a member of the English team.
Below are links to some great websites which you may like to use at home….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s  A video that goes through each sound and its pronunciation
