Phonics

Beeston Fields Primary School is a Letters and Sounds School

 

We follow the Letters and Sounds guidance to deliver high quality Phonics lessons from FS1 to Year 2.

 

Lesson Design

 

From FS1 to Year 2, we follow the four-part lesson design to structure all of our lessons. Each lesson includes: Revisit, Teach, Practise and Apply.  Every intervention lesson also follows this lesson structure.

 

Revisit

This part of the lesson sequence comes at the beginning of the lesson. It involves recapping all of the previous sounds taught using the Beeston Field’s Phoneme cards. This part of the lesson should last 2 to 3 minutes. The teacher speeds through the cards, scanning around the room to ensure all children are participating and are engaged. 

 

Teach

Within this part of the lesson, the new sound is introduced along with the grapheme representation of it. The children have the opportunity to say the sound, hear it, see it and explore it. They also read the sound and write it. Teachers explain to the children the letter names and the sound that they make, “My phoneme is ____, my letter names are_____”. We teach Phase 2 and Phase 3 with a mnemonic and an action that is linked to the picture/grapheme cards. This is used more frequently in FS2, when it is first introduced and isn’t used or needed as much in Year 1.

 

Practise

Within the practise section of the lesson, the children have the opportunity to read words that contain the new sound. To support children with their reading we highlight the key sound in red and use sound buttons (dots and dashes) underneath the word. The children also have the opportunity to write words within the practise section. We use robot arms to segment the word and sometimes count the number of sounds within the word to support the writing.

When writing CVC or CVCC/ CCVC words, the children use a phoneme frame so that they can put one sound into each box. This is predominately used in the foundation unit when teaching Phase 2 and Phase 3.

 

Apply

Within the apply part of the lesson, the children apply their new phonics knowledge so that they can read a caption, or a sentence. They also have the opportunity to write a caption or a sentence containing the new sound.

 

Segmenting and Blending

Segmenting

When segmenting a word to spell, the children use robot arms and squash the word back together with their hands. Children use a Beeston phoneme mat to support spelling out.

Blending

Sound buttons are used to support blending, these are dots and dashes. When they are first introduced in FS2, the focus sound is underlined in red to highlight it to the children.

 

Reading

Children in Year 1 each have a decodable book that is directly matched to their level of phonics. They take these books home so that they can read independently. These books are to be given by the teacher/ teaching assistant and changed by the teacher/ teaching assistant. The children will also take home a book that can be read to them, a book of high interest. See Reading Policy for more information.