What is Phonics?

Phonics is a method for teaching the sounds and spelling patterns of the English language and is taught every day, and throughout the day, at school.

• It is the knowledge of letters and the sounds they make.
• It gives us the skills of blending these sounds together to read words.
• Through it, we learn the skills of segmenting the sounds in a word and choosing the correct letters needed to spell it.
• Phonics is the step-up to word recognition. To be able to automatically read all words, both decodable and tricky ones, is the ultimate goal for all our children.

How is Phonics taught at KEPS?

We have a systematic approach to the teaching of phonics at KEPS which engages children in a fun and memorable manner. We use a DfE validated scheme called Twinkl Phonics, which provides the basis for clear, systematic teaching of the sounds (phonemes) and spelling patterns (graphemes) to support the children’s development in phonics. Our children first encounter the teaching of phonics in Pre-School with Level 1 and is then consistently built upon throughout EYFS and Year 1. This will be continued into Year 2 and Key Stage 2 if required.

Teaching the Levels

The Twinkl Phonics programme contains six levels of phonic learning for children from Nursery to Year 2.

What are the recommended ages/year groups for each level?

Level 1 - 36 weeks (Nursery/Preschool)

Level 2 - 7 weeks (Reception)

Level 3 - 12 weeks (Reception)

Level 4 - 5 weeks (Reception)

Level 5 - 30 weeks (Year 1)

Level 6 - 30 weeks (Year 2)

Level 1

Level 1 concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and underpins learning throughout the teaching of Phonics Levels 2-6. The emphasis during Level 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Level 1 activities are arranged under the following 7 Aspects:

Aspect 1: Environmental Sounds

Aspect 2: Instrumental Sounds

Aspect 3: Body Percussion

Aspect 4: Rhythm and Rhyme

Aspect 5: Alliteration

Aspect 6: Voice Sounds

Aspect 7: Oral Blending and Segmenting

Level 2

The purpose of Level 2 is to teach the first 19 most commonly-used letters and the sounds they make. Children will move on from oral blending and segmenting, to blending and segmenting with letters. They are also introduced to some tricky words for reading e.g. the.

• Week 1 - s  a  t  p
• Week 2 - i  n  m  d
• Week 3 - g  o  c  k
• Week 4 - ck  e  u  r
• Week 5 - h  b  f  l
• Week 6 - ff, ll, ss, ‘s’ saying /z/

Level 3

Throughout Level 3 a further 25 graphemes are introduced. These include consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs and trigraphs so that children can represent 42 phonemes with a grapheme. They also learn the spelling of the Level 2 tricky words.

• Week 1 – j  v  w  x
• Week 2 – y  z  zz  qu  ch
• Week 3 - sh  th  th  ng
• Week 4 - ai  ee  igh  oa  
• Week 5 - oo  oo  ar  or   
• Week 6 - ur  ow  oi  ear  
• Week 7 - air  ure  er

Throughout Levels 3, 4 and 5 children will also be using pseudo or ‘alien’ words. This is good practise for segmenting and blending sounds and will prepare Year 1 children for the phonics screening.

What is the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check?

There is a statutory requirement that all Year 1 pupils will take a phonics screening check in June. The phonics screening check is a short, light-touch assessment to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It should be an enjoyable activity for the child which takes no more than a few minutes.

Level 4

In Level 4, children are introduced to adjacent consonants, 14 new tricky words for reading and the Level 3 tricky words for spelling. Children read and spell words containing consonant clusters. These are 2 or more consonants, but when put together, each can be heard as individual phonemes e.g. cl dr sk mp nd. Words containing these are known as CCVC and CVCC words. e.g. black, strip, chest).
 

Level 5

Children entering Level 5 will already be able to read and spell words with adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and flask. They will also be able to read and spell some polysyllabic words (words with more than one syllable).
 
The purpose of this Level is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling.
 
In Level 5, children will learn alternative graphemes and phonemes. For example, they already know ai as in rain, but now they will be introduced to ay as in day and a-e as in make.
         
Alternative pronunciations for graphemes will also be introduced, e.g. ea in sea, bread and break.

New graphemes for reading:
ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e.
 

Level 6

Children should now be able to read hundreds of words, doing this in three ways:

• Reading the words automatically if they are very familiar;
• Decoding them quickly and silently because their sounding and blending routine is now well established;
• Decoding them aloud.

The shift from learning to read to reading to learn takes place and children read for information and for pleasure.

The purpose of Level 6 is to:

• Develop children’s knowledge of spelling patterns and best-guess grapheme selection;
• Learn more alternative graphemes for known phonemes;
• Learn more alternative pronunciations for known graphemes;
• Develop an understanding of the spelling rules for adding suffixes and prefixes;
• Introduce homophones/near homophones and contractions;
• Learn to spell more common exception words;
• Develop their understanding of grammar rules;
• Learn effective writing techniques including editing and proofreading and learn more strategies to read and write independently.

At the end of Key Stage 1, some children may need further support in building on their phonetical knowledge and understanding, and so will continue to receive support as needed into Years 3-6.

The Twinkl Phonics progression information can be found here:

Spellings at KEPS

All children in Years 1-6 will be given a number of words to learn each week, and EYFS will begin weekly spelling practise in the summer term. In Years EYFS, 1 and 2, these spellings will be linked to the phonics being taught in school. In Years 3-6, the children progress through the Twinkl Spelling Programme, which follows on from the Twinkl Phonics used in KS1; the children are systematically taught the spelling rules and requirements before embedding them throughout the week.

The Twinkl Handwriting Overviews for each year group can be found here: