Phonics and Early Reading 

Our intent, in phonics, at Lady Seawards School is to ensure all children have a solid and secure knowledge and understanding of letters and sounds, ensuring that it is embedded and built upon as they progress through the Early Years and KS1. Children will later use these early foundations to support, develop and enhance their love of reading and writing.

At Lady Seawards Primary School all children in the Early Years and Year 1 have discrete daily phonics teaching. Using the 'Sounds Write' phonics scheme, children are taught the phonemes (sounds) systematically through the initial and then extended codes in the programme. During phonics lessons children learn how to blend and segment for reading and writing and together we discuss spelling patterns. We recognise the importance of teaching children the essential decoding skills needed, which they will eventually be able to apply independently when both reading and writing.

Using our letter join handwriting scheme, children are taught how to form their letters correctly and are reminded of these when writing. Alongside this, they are also taught to read and spell tricky words, high frequency words and common exception words. The children in reception begin by learning the initial code through a number of units and then when they move into Year 1 the extended code is taught, building upon the knowledge and skills that have been previously taught.

We recognise that the development of spoken language and the enjoyment and comprehension of quality literature go hand in hand to develop a lifelong love of reading. We aim to nurture and develop these attributes alongside our schools’ approach to phonics. 

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check

The phonic screening check is a government test that all children in Year 1 take during the summer term. Children are given a range of real words and ‘pseudo words’ to sound out and read. This is testing their phonic knowledge through all the phases of phonics. Children will then get a score out of 40 of how many they have got correct this will then be reported to parents. The government then publish the ‘pass mark’ a few weeks later, this has been 32 for the last few years. Children at Lady Seawards School are well equipped to take the Phonics Screening Check and they take it with an adult familiar to them, this is usually their class teacher.