Phonics, Reading and Spelling
Developing a love of reading is a key priority for all of our children at North Road Community Primary School.
We use the Pearson Bug Club Phonics program in EYFS and KS1 to teach phonics. This is a systematic synthetic phonics programme, which is delivered in discrete daily lessons and practised through-out the day. Children learn phonemes, digraphs, split digraphs and trigraphs through actions, rhymes and songs, during interactive and fun lessons. Children are also able to practice their phonic learning at home through games and reading books assigned to them in their personalised Bug Club account.
We use a range of reading schemes and phonically decodable texts to support children’s reading development.
Children are encouraged to read to an adult daily, as part of their home learning. Adults are then encouraged to ask comprehension questions about the text using the prompts on the child’s personalised bookmark. Each read is logged in the child’s Reading Diary and counted towards a Reading Award. These range from bronze to platinum and are rewarded with certificates, bag tags, medals, pin badges, trophies and book tokens.
Children visit the school library weekly to borrow books to further develop their love of reading.
Each classroom has a book area from which additional books can be borrowed. In addition, each classroom has a teacher’s bookshelf where teachers display, promote and share their favourite texts or newly released titles.
Children can also choose to read at break times and lunchtimes, choosing a book from the outdoor book shed and relaxing in the Reading Tepee. At every opportunity, we encourage children to read for pleasure.
At North Road Community Primary School, we work in partnership with five other schools, as part of The Domino Alliance, to support each other in providing the very best learning opportunities for all of our pupils. As part of The Domino Alliance, the English Subject Leaders worked together to provide a bank of resources to support parents with their child’s learning in Reading. These can be found on The Domino Alliance website and by following the link below.
Phonics for Spelling
Building on from the key reading and spelling phonics skills taught in Reception and KS1, we apply a ‘phonics first’ approach to the teaching of spellings in KS2. The ‘phonics first’ approach support children to identify the sounds they hear within the word and then identify how those sounds are written/represented. The children continue to build their knowledge of the phonic code (the list of the different ways a sound can be represented) to support their independent application of spellings within their daily written work.
Download: Bug Club Phonic Code
Useful information – Reading
Below are the 100 high frequency words, in phases.
Phonetically decodable words are in green, to visually represent that these words require phonic knowledge and skills, whereas the high frequency ‘irregular words’ are in red.
Phase 2 | ||
Decodable words | Irregular words | |
a | had | the |
an | back | to |
as | and | I |
at | get | no |
if | big | go |
in | him | into |
is | his | |
it | not | |
of | got | |
off | up | |
on | mum | |
can | but | |
dad | put (north) |
Phase 3 | |||
Decodable words | Irregular words | ||
will | see | you | he |
that | for | they | she |
this | now | all | we |
then | down | are | me |
them | look | my | be |
with | too | her | was |
Phase 4 | ||
Decodable words | Irregular words | |
went | said | were |
it’s | have | there |
from | like | little |
children | so | one |
just | do | when |
help | some | out |
come | what |
Phase 5 | ||
Decodable words | Irregular Words | |
don’t | day | oh |
old | made | their |
I’m | came | people |
by | make | Mr |
time | here | Mrs |
house | saw | looked |
about | very | called |
your | put (south) | asked |
could |
Useful Links
First 100 High Frequency Word List – www.highfrequencywords.org/First100
Second 100 High Frequency Word List – www.highfrequencywords.org/Second100
National Curriculum Spelling Document – English-Appendix-1-Spelling.pdf
Phonics Information Session
- Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write.
- It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.
- Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.
- Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.
Download our phonics information pack: Parent Phonic Information Session Oct 2023
Download: Bug Club Actions for sounds list
Phase 2 Sounds and Blending
Click on these short clips to hear the Phase 2 sounds (phonemes) for each written representation (grapheme).