Phonics Statement of Intent

At Kingston we teach high quality phonics with the expectation that all pupils are able to read to with confidence and fluency by the end of Key Stage One. We value and encourage pupils to read for enjoyment and recognise this starts with the foundations of acquiring letter sounds, segmenting and blending skills, enjoying success and gaining confidence- to develop the habit of reading and to prepare them to fully access the whole curriculum in Key Stage Two.

Our Kingston Letters and Sounds Programme (Kingston L&S) is a systematic synthetic phonics programme. Systematic synthetic phonics is an evidence based, structured approach to teach children to read and spell. This method teaches our pupils to learn the relationship between the sounds (phonemes) of the spoken English language and the letter symbols (graphemes) of the written English language.

Implementation of our Phonics Curriculum

Kingston L&S programme begins in the Autumn Term of Foundation Stage, with well-structured and sequenced daily lessons taught throughout Foundation Stage and Year 1. Pupils practise applying their taught phonic knowledge and skills and embed their phonics learning using Collins Big Cat decodable books. In addition to the taught daily phonics lesson, regular assessment identifies pupils who need specific intervention to quickly plug identified gaps in phonics learning.

Daily phonics lessons include extensive teacher-pupil interaction and a multi-sensory approach to learning. Pupils are taught:

• Phoneme and grapheme recognition
• Blending for reading
• Segmenting for spelling
• Application of phonics strategies for reading and spelling

Year One Phonics Screening

The phonics screening check is a short assessment to confirm whether individual children have learnt phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard and is undertaken in the Summer Term of Year 1. Children who have not reached the expected level will continue to receive phonics interventions and they will have the opportunity to retake the phonics screening check in Year 2. 

Supporting Your Child At Home

The following are some websites that are useful to use to practise phonics with your child: 

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

http://stimulatinglearning.co.uk/2015/02/phonics/

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/the-alphabet-song

Alphablocks, which can be found on iPlayer (CBeebies), is excellent for supporting the children's phonic acquisition.