Queens’ Federation: Phonics Subject Statement

Intent

At the Queens’ Federation we aim to foster ‘Learning for Life.’

We will provide a rich, relevant and inspirational curriculum that promotes a lifelong love of learning and equips our pupils with the key knowledge and understanding, skills and personal qualities that they will need to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Our curriculum is designed to be relevant to our children and is linked to the context of our school and the local community.

At Queens’ Federation, we are committed to providing great reading provision and developing pupils’ proficiency in, and love of, reading. We ensure that all pupils 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.

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 phonic awareness and effective blending, decoding and comprehension skills, we use a synthetic phonics programme called Success For All Phonic 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.

Implementation

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

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

• Revisit and Review
• Teach and Model
• Practise and Apply
• Celebrate Achievement and Success

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

Reading materials support rapid and sustained progress and are carefully matched to the scope and sequence of the phonics programme. A comprehensive set of decodable readers are provided by the programme. These are used alongside additional reading materials that also match the sequence set out in the programme.

Pupils are regularly assessed informally by the teacher within lessons and over a sequence of lessons to ensure they keep up. If pupils require additional support, they are provided with keep up sessions to ensure they stay on track with the rest of the class. Formal assessments are completed every half term using FFT’s Reading Assessment Programme.

Pupils who require additional support are identified using a range of assessment information and are supported through small group or one to one interventions. Interventions are designed and structured to improve reading fluency, comprehension, phonics and spelling skills.

Parents are encouraged to be as involved as possible in their child’s phonics journey. Parent workshops are held to enable parents to discover how phonics is taught in school and how they can best support their children at home. Information regarding the National Phonics Screening Check is also provided for parents.

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 that pupils become fluent, confident readers by the end of KS1. Pupils 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 and they will develop fluency and comprehension skills, take please in exploring the rich literary world around them, acquire a love of reading and flourish as readers. They will also have the knowledge and skills to meet the required pass rate in the phonics screening check at the end of Year 1.