Phonics at Chartridge

Success For All Phonics - FFT

At Chartridge Combined School we use FFT "Success for All" Phonics to teach phonics across EYFS, KS1 and beyond where needed. Success for All Phonics is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme backed by 20 years’ evidence-based research and practice. It meets all the requirements of the National Curriculum and the EYFS framework and has been validated by the DfE.

Chartridge Combined School aims to ensure that all children become successful, confident readers by the end of Key Stage one and believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a whole language approach that promotes a ‘Love of reading’ culture. This curriculum is aimed at reinforcing a consistent, high quality approach to the teaching and learning of phonics across the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), Key Stage One and on into Key Stage Two for children who still need this further support.

What is phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch. Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out. For example, when a child is taught the sounds for the letters t, p, a and s, they can start to read the words: “tap”, “taps”, “pat”, “pats” and “sat”. This skill can then be inverted so that words can be broken down (segmented) into their component sounds in order to spell them.

Phonics at Chartridge Combined School:

The FFT Phonics programme is designed for daily use from the beginning of EYFS, enabling children to make a smooth transition from Reception to Key Stage 1. Children have a daily 25-minute phonics session and a daily 25-minute shared reader session. Each phonics session consists of reviewing previously learnt sounds (GPCs) and then teaching, practising and applying a new sound(s). The programme addresses both encoding and decoding skills. Decoding is the reading aspect of literacy and encoding is the spelling aspect. Both processes work together.

The children are grouped by ability to ensure that they are taught at the most appropriate level for them. This maximises progress because the level of challenge for each child is appropriate, neither too great nor too small, enabling them to progress successfully in developing their skills. Children’s skills within a group will be similar, so it is easier for the teacher to ensure that any skills gaps are addressed. To ensure that every child is in the most appropriate teaching group, children are assessed and regrouped at least every half term.

Shared Reading Lessons

It is important that children do not simply know their phonics, but they can apply this skill to reading. Therefore, as part of our FFT "Success for All" we have a daily reading session, based on the phonic skills the children have been taught. Using fully decodable texts children are given further opportunities to use these skills and teachers model how to use this knowledge to support their reading.

This application is also seen within English lessons and the wider curriculum.

Supporting your child at home:

In our early phonics sessions, we practise the letters of the alphabet, their order and the sounds they make. The images on our alphabet strip help us to remember the formation and also the sounds each written letter makes.

We teach the children their sounds by using Phonics Phrases to help them remember the sound each letter makes and letter formation cues to help them remember how to form each letter when writing it. For example, for the GPC /s/ we say ‘The snake slides and slithers’ to help us remember the sound of the letter and we say ‘Left around, right around, from head to tail’ when writing the letter.

There is a dedicated online Parent Portal (parents.fft.org.uk) which provides access to a growing range of materials to support phonics and reading at home. This includes all the alliterative phrases and writing cues that are mentioned above, videos containing the proper pronunciation of all the Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) taught in the programme and it gives access to a full digital library of our Shared Readers, along with read-aloud videos of each book to support home reading. There are also lots of tips for home reading. To access all these resources please login using the passcode for our school.

Your child will bring home a decodable reading book every day in their book bag, alongside a reading record. Children should be reading to an adult at home daily. When reading please focus first on the inside front cover and read the red and green words with your child before moving on to read their book. The red words are not decodable for your child, they will have been taught these words within their phonics lessons. The questions within the book are also fully decodable so encourage your child to read and answer these. You can of course ask your own questions too! Please record every time you read with your child in their reading record.

If children are to become lifelong readers, it is essential that they are encouraged to read for pleasure. The desire of wanting to read will help with the skill of reading. To help foster a love of reading, children will take a library book home each week that they can share and enjoy with you. You should not expect your child to read this book independently and certainly should not try to get your child to do so. This book is for you to read to or with your child and enjoy together. Please also share and read together other books of yours or their choice. Reading a range of material across a week, fiction and non-fiction, will expose your child to a range of vocabulary. It will provide them with a deep understanding about their world and fill their brain with background knowledge and stimulate their imagination. It is crucial to your child's development and understanding of language and how words work together. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word.

Phonics Statement of intent

Intent

At Chartridge we are committed to providing great reading provision and developing pupils’ proficiency in, and love of, reading. We ensure that all children have the skills, knowledge and understanding to become confident and enthusiastic readers and writers. We believe that high-quality phonics teaching improves literacy levels and gives all children a solid base on which to build and develop their reading habits so that they read widely and often for reading and information.

The programme supports our intentions to teach children to read and write independently so that they are able to access a broad and exciting curriculum and flourish as learners throughout their time at our school.

Implementation

We maintain fidelity in the implementation of our phonics teaching by using FFT Success for All Phonics which allows the children to learn phonics through a highly structured programme of daily lessons across FS/KS1, using a variety of fun activities in multi-sensory and systematic ways.

Each session gives an opportunity for children to revisit their previous experience, be taught new skills, practice together and apply what they have learned and celebrate their achievements. It follows the teaching principles of:

Revisit and Review
Teach and Model
Practise and Apply
Celebrate Achievement and Assess

Time is incorporated to allow for consolidation so that children can secure their skills, knowledge and understanding.

The programme is underpinned by a set of seven core principles designed to support all teachers and children.

Core principles:

Systematic Progression
Regular Assessment
Early Intervention
Multisensory Approach
Co-operative Learning
Application of Skills
Reduced Workload and Collegiate Approach

Reading materials have been designed to support rapid and sustained progress and are well-matched to the scope and sequence of the programme. A comprehensive set of 68 decodable shared readers is provided by the programme.

The FFT Success for All Phonics Scope and Sequence is set out clearly and provides detailed guidance and support for teachers to plan and deliver high quality lessons. A synthetic approach to teaching ‘pure sounds’ and the skills of segmenting and blending are incorporated into the teaching and learning materials. Lessons are planned so that children build on their skills sequentially and systematically and can be adapted and modified to meet the needs of the children accordingly.

Training and support is offered through FFT Success for All Phonics and FFT and our school support staff through this training offer. All staff are given the skills, knowledge and understanding to deliver high- quality phonics lessons and to achieve strong and sustained pupil outcomes in phonics and early reading and writing.

Impact

Through the consistent, systematic and daily teaching of the FFT Success for All Phonics programme, our aim is for children to become fluent, confident readers by the end of Key Stage One.

Children are regularly assessed informally by the teacher within the lessons and over a sequence of lessons to ensure they keep up. If children need additional support, they are provided the necessary interventions to ensure they stay on track with the rest of the class. More formal assessments are completed every half term using FFT’s Reading Assessment Programme (RAP) which covers all KS1 assessments including phonics skills, decoding, reading fluency, comprehension and the Year 1 phonics screening check.

Children who require further additional support (catch-up) are identified using a range of assessment information and will be supported through small group or one-to-one interventions.

At the end of Year 1 children are statutorily assessed using the Phonics Screening Check. This screening check confirms whether the child has met the appropriate phonics standard and can be used diagnostically to identify areas that need further attention going forward. Children who do not meet the required standard will continue their phonics lessons so that they are ready to retake the screening at the end of Year 2.

Through the FFT Success for All Phonics programme and our commitment to phonics teaching, children will be equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding to decode unfamiliar words using a range of strategies. They will have a firm phonic base to support them on their literacy journey through school. They will develop their fluency and comprehension skills, take pleasure in exploring the rich literary world around them, acquire a love of reading and flourish as readers.

Chartridge Combined School

Phonics and Early Reading Policy

Intent

At Chartridge we use FFT Success for All programmes to support our mastery approach to early reading. We are committed to providing the very best provision so that all children master the skills to become confident, fluent readers and writers. We know that high-quality phonics teaching improves literacy levels and gives all children a solid base on which to build and develop their reading habits so that they read widely and often for information and pleasure. We have a strong emphasis on the development of language and give specific attention to developing vocabulary and speaking and listening skills.

Through daily, systematic and consistent high-quality phonics teaching, children learn to blend and segment words for reading and spelling. To allow our children to develop a strong phonological awareness and effective blending, decoding, fluency and comprehension skills, we have chosen to use a DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) called FFT Success for All Phonics from FFT. The programme supports our intentions to teach children to read and write independently so that they are able to access a broad and exciting curriculum and flourish as learners throughout their time at our school.

The phonics programme is part of a comprehensive package of programmes which we use to support a mastery approach to phonics and early reading. The FFT Success for All programmes (Phonics, Shared Reader, Tutoring with the Lightning Squad and Reading Assessment Programme (RAP) complement each other in highly effective ways and provide the tools that all our practitioners need to develop competent, fluent early readers, preparing the way for passionate and successful lifelong reading.

We have strong fidelity to the programmes we have selected because we ensure that training is of the highest quality. All staff have access to regular training and share best practice in school and with others. Our Phonics Lead is allocated time every day to support staff and pupils. We are well supported by the team at FFT Success for All who offer responsive and up-to-date information and professional development. As a result, our staff are well trained and proficient in the teaching of phonics and early reading.

Co-operative Learning strategies are embedded within the programmes and provide a platform where mastery teaching can take place. They support the generation of a ‘collaborative, thinking classroom’ where children are responsible and successful learners. Children are given opportunities to work in partnerships, use peer teaching and to support one another. They are encouraged to build resilience in their learning and become trained in the expectations of successful Co-operative Learning. Suggestions are made within The Reading Framework for effective pair work and these are part of the Co-operative Learning pedagogy within FFT Success for All programmes.

Implementation

At Chartridge we implement FFT Success for All Phonics which provides 68 fully decodable reading books (Shared Readers), daily phonics and reading lesson plans, assessment tools, picture cards, mnemonics for letter formation and all other teaching resources needed to support the effective teaching of phonics from EYFS to the end of Year 1. The programme is designed for daily use from the beginning of Reception, enabling children to make a smooth transition from Reception to Key Stage 1. The daily lesson plans cover all the main Grapheme–Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) and Common Exception Words (CEWs) to provide children with the phonic knowledge and skills required for success in the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check.

Our aim is for children to become fluent, confident readers by the end of Key Stage 1.

The programme is underpinned by a set of seven core principles designed to support all teachers and children.

Core Principles

Systematic Progression

Introducing phonics and its application to early reading in a carefully sequenced and progressive way: moving from developing phonological awareness through rhyme to introducing Grapheme– Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) in order, through a six-phased progression.
Practising the skills of blending and segmenting as new GPCs are introduced and reinforcing them throughout the programme.
Developing an increasing bank of accessible words, including Common Exception Words (CEWs).
Building confident readers through the consistent, systematic and daily teaching of the FFT Success for All Phonics programme with accompanying Shared Readers.

Regular Assessment

Providing frequent and comprehensive formative and summative assessment opportunities to inform teaching and ensure that children’s progress is closely monitored.
Providing an opportunity for the early identification of children who may be at risk of falling behind.
Using the Reading Assessment Programme (RAP) as a diagnostic tool and to support formative and summative assessments.

Early Intervention

Ensuring that the lowest attaining 20% of children also make progress and reach age-related expectations is fundamental to our mission to secure FFT Success for All children.
Providing dedicated time for review and consolidation of skills to ensure children needing extra support do not fall behind.
Providing Tutoring with the Lightning Squad to support catch-up and additional teaching to those children whose reading skills are below age-related expectations. The tutoring programme has an integrated assessment tool so that skills gaps are automatically identified and addressed.

Multisensory Approach

Providing pacey and active lessons that balance short inputs of direct teaching with immediate whole-class response and engagement.
Providing multisensory lessons that engage all children in a variety of activities designed to support learning in fun and memorable ways.
Linking pictures and mnemonics to support the learning of each GPC and helping children to recall and remember.

Co-operative Learning

Underpinning daily lessons with Co-operative Learning techniques in which learning skills are developed by teachers explicitly modelling behaviour for learning.
Using positive feedback to help children to understand when they meet expectations and for motivation.
Encouraging children to work together in supportive peer partnerships.

Application of Skills

Providing texts – Shared Readers – which are carefully aligned to progression in phonics skills, so that children are motivated to apply their new learning in a meaningful way.
Developing a separate, but linked, approach to the teaching of reading comprehension during the Shared Reader lessons.

Reduced Workload and Collegiate Approach

Providing comprehensive lesson planning and resources, as well as training and ongoing support, we try our best to make teachers’ lives easier and reduce lesson preparation time, benefitting everybody in our school community.
The shared, school-wide approach engenders a focus on outcomes for children and a collaborative team effort across all staff in our school.

Daily Phonics Lessons in Reception and Year 1

Over the course of 3 terms, children will cover the first 50 sounds in the developmental progression. The planning is divided into weeks or ‘Steps’ of the programme, with each Step covering a select number of GPCs. FFTs Success for All’s Scope and Sequence document sets this out.

During Term 1, children will learn 3 or 4 new GPCs per week, with the final day of the week being reserved for review and consolidation.

Starting in Term 2, children begin to learn vowel digraphs at a pace of 1 per week.

During Term 3, children continue to learn vowel digraphs along with common alternative spellings.

The year concludes with 3 weeks of review to consolidate all Reception level content in preparation for Year 1.

To support both teachers and children, the phonics lessons follow a consistent daily structure with clear timing goals for each activity. This consistent approach enables lessons to be taught with pace as everybody understands the routine and what is expected. Each lesson lasts 25 minutes and follows the same basic sequence each day:

Review of Previously Taught GPCs (10 minutes)
Teach, Practise and Apply New GPC (15 minutes)

Daily Shared Reader Lessons in Reception and Year 1

Shared Readers are fully decodable texts in a wide range of genres that include familiar characters, settings and topics relevant to children of all ages.

Over the course of 3 terms, children will on average read 32 Shared Readers linked to the progression of sounds in their daily phonic lessons. It is important that children don’t simply know their phonics but can apply that knowledge to the skill of reading itself. That’s why the Shared Readers are carefully aligned to the phonics lessons and allow children to practise reading the new and recently taught GPCs as well as the Common Exception Words to which they have been introduced.

To support both teachers and children, the Shared Reader lessons follow a consistent daily structure with clear timing goals for each activity. This consistent approach enables lessons to be taught with pace as everybody understands the routine and what is expected.

Each Shared Reader is designed to be read over 5 days.

In Reception Term 1, the lesson plans are 15 minutes long, before progressing to 20 minutes in Term 2 and 25 minutes in Term 3 in order to be ready for a full 25-minute session in Year 1. This is partly to accommodate the increasing length of the texts, as well as the introduction of sentence writing.

In addition, the five-day schedule also provides opportunities to develop comprehension, fluent reading and to consolidate letter formation, spelling and sentence writing. During their reading sessions, children are introduced to conventions for grammar and punctuation, so they learn how they impact on reading. Understanding these conventions also aids comprehension and their ability, eventually, to write with meaning.

Consolidation

Time for consolidation is built into phonics and Shared Reader lessons so that children can revisit prior learning and consolidate their skills, knowledge and understanding. It is also a time to carry out summative assessments and to act on the analysis and information gathered.

Keep-Up and Catch-Up Guidance

Children are provided with opportunities to keep up with the pace of learning in lessons, through additional sessions and within wider implementation across the curriculum in EYFS and Year 1. Targeted teaching and resources are used to support pupils at all levels to master the skills required for the next step in learning.

Children who need to catch up more significantly will be provided with the support they need to make progress from their starting points and to master skills incrementally to achieve success. They will do this in a range of ways supported by the resources and tools provided within the programmes, by expert teaching and through interventions as necessary.

Tutoring Programme

Tutoring with the Lightning Squad (TWL) is an approved tutoring programme that is designed to enable pupils to catch up with their reading skills. It provides assessment, planning and teaching tools for tutoring pupils in pairs or individually. The programme provides structured reading activities and practice to address skill development in fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and comprehension.

In a TWL tutoring session, pupils work in pairs on a computer. During the activities, partners take turns completing activities and providing feedback to each other. The member of staff works with pupils to provide support, teaching and helping them if they get stuck, conducting quick checks to verify mastery and providing feedback to ensure success.

Wider Reading and Home Reading Guidance

A physical copy of the Shared Reader books will be sent home with children at the end of each week, copies of all books are also available for parents to access via the online parent platform.

Children will be familiar with this book from the Shared Reader lessons they have had during the week.

As a school we have also collated books together, matching the Steps within the FFT Success for All Phonics programme. Children will bring home a book matched to their current phonic ability so that they can use their phonic knowledge to tackle decodable words.

Some of the first books a child will bring home are wordless books. These are used to encourage children to talk about the pictures and stories and to create their own sentences about what they see and what is happening in the pictures.

Children will also bring home a library book for parents to read to them. These are books that are regularly seen on children’s bookshelves and in the library. They are stories that excite children and instil a love of reading.

Prioritising reading for pleasure

At Chartridge we prioritise reading for pleasure by promoting reading and striving for mastery within the teaching and learning we offer. We have chosen FFT Success for All programmes because they set reading expectations high. The language in the Shared Readers is rich, varied and motivating.

We encourage active reading across the school by:

Reading to the children every day.
Offering a rich and diverse range of texts to children, opening their eyes to the world and different cultures.
Providing book areas in classrooms for children to select and have access to quality texts that are age and stage appropriate.
Giving every child a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school and vice versa to ensure communication between home and school has a positive impact on learning. As the children progress through the school, they are encouraged to write their own comments and keep a list of the books/authors that they have read.
Celebrating reading through events, visits, visitors and in celebration time.

Parental Engagement

At Chartridge we support parents to work in partnership with us so that they can support their child with phonics and early reading in the best ways possible. We provide information to help them understand our teaching methods and the programmes we use. Parents can access key information via our website https://fft.org.uk/phonics/ and the Parent Portal - https://parents.fft.org.uk/ and of course, we will answer parent questions about the programme, please direct questions to your child’s teacher.

Assessment

Making accurate assessments of individual pupils against key learning outcomes is essential for a mastery approach so that learning can be built incrementally in progressive and systematic steps as soon as they need to.

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support.

The assessment expectation across the programme is for daily, formative monitoring and feedback to be carried out and for this to be supported and validated by using the Reading Assessment Programme (RAP).

RAP provides an effective diagnostic assessment tool which identifies a child’s strengths and areas of development and is used to inform the next steps in teaching and learning. Progress is demonstrated using the summative assessments as they provide an accurate and systematic picture and include elements such as an assessment of fluency.

Assessment for Learning (AFL) - the day-to-day assessments a teacher makes to inform practice are part of everyday classroom practice. In phonics and early reading, they allow the teacher to identify children needing keep-up support. In the review part of each lesson, gaps can be identified and addressed and time can be allocated within consolidation days and weeks to address areas in which children are not as secure.

Frequent formative assessment opportunities are built into FFT Success for All Phonics in the form of Consolidation Weeks. These weeks are a vital part of the success of the programme as children will not always master a GPC the first time it is taught. Formative assessment is also based on daily classroom work and observation, capturing children’s responses to questions and their oral and written contributions, where these indicate their knowledge or use of a particular GPC. Similarly, children’s interactions with books and other texts will give teachers a good indication of how well they are able to apply their phonics knowledge and skills to reading.

Summative Assessments and the Reading Assessment Programme (RAP)

We use FFT's Reading Assessment Programme (RAP) to highlight strengths and identify areas of weakness in children's key reading skills. This information informs planning and helps to pinpoint the reading skills that need development, whether through catch-up intervention or whole-class teaching. Thereby 'plugging those gaps' and securing children's reading skills as they move through their primary school journey.

There are 29 assessments within FFT's Reading Assessment Programme (RAP) all matched to the scope and sequence of the phonics and Shared Reader lesson content. Staff here at Chartridge receive regular training and updates to ensure that the assessment information has a positive impact on outcomes for all our children.

Statutory assessment

We prepare children well to take the DfE Phonics Screening Check. This screening check confirms whether the child has met the appropriate phonics standard in Year 1 and can be used diagnostically to identify areas that need further attention going forward. Children who do not meet the required standard will continue their phonics lessons so that they are ready to retake the screening at the end of Year 2.

We provide children with high-quality teaching and learning as well as access to past checks that are all held within the Reading Assessment Programme (RAP).

Impact

We monitor impact through the assessment data we obtain and through monitoring of practice.

Analysis of data informs practice and supports ongoing developments in early reading so that all children master the skills, knowledge and understanding required to be confident and fluent readers.

Lesson observations, shared pedagogical dialogue, shared best practice and an ongoing commitment to achieve the very best for all our pupils make for impactful practice.

We set expectations high and measure the impact against these expectations. Our findings are built into action planning and are part of our continual cycle of improvement.

Whole School Commitment

We pledge our commitment to continued development with phonics and early reading and look to research and new initiatives to expand and enhance the provision we offer.