Phonics at Highlands Primary School
At Highlands Primary school we are passionate about ensuring children become confident, independent and enthusiastic readers and writers. We believe that Phonics provides children with the early skills and foundations of reading and writing which in turn enables to them to access and succeed in the rest of the curriculum. The phonics curriculum consists of children learning how to form letters, blend and segment words to read and write, recognise ‘tricky words’ and high frequency words and building an understanding of what alternate sounds and alternate pronunciations are. Moreover a phonics session also supports handwriting skills as it teaches the correct letter formation at the same times as graphemes are being learned. Through daily high quality phonics teaching children will develop the foundations to become fluent readers and writers but also to build their self-esteem and perseverance to tackle new challenges.
Phonics is taught daily in Nursery, Reception and Year 1; children in Year 2 continue with Phonics to support their spelling and grammar as well as revising previous learning if it continues to benefit their learning. Children will work through phases 1 – 6 from Nursery to Year 2 and it is of high importance that we teach children using a systemic, synthetic and sematic method through the Letters and Sounds programme of study. Each phonics session follows the same structure of: revisit, teach, practise, apply, assess. As well as this we use the Bug Club reading scheme to allow pupils access to a wide range of books at home online.
GES Simply Letters and Sounds is is a complete systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme, with contents carefully selected from Letters and Sounds 2007, Statutory Revised Early Years Framework, 2021 and the National Curriculum 2014 documents.
At GES Ltd, we have a moral purpose to close the attainment gap in reading between disadvantaged children and other children nationally. We believe that it is every child’s fundamental right across the globe to acquire the basic, life-long skills of reading.