Spelling and Phonics
What Spelling is taught at Longwell Green Primary School?
ESSENTIALSPELLING is a whole class approach that teaches children spelling patterns, strategies and knowledge aligned with National Curriculum year group expectations for years 2-6
How can I help my child at home?
- Make learning spellings personalised and fun! Just as we are as adults, we are more inclined to do something if there is incentive to return to the task. The children are more likely to want to learn if it is done in an engaging way!
- Find an approach that YOUR child responds to. If they love their tablets, open an arty app and get them to draw and swirl their spellings. If they love the outdoors, get them to run or bounce and say the spellings out loud or collect the letters in the right order. If your child loves music, they can make up little songs, use syllables to learn and clapping to help them remember the spellings. If your child like to create with words, they could create a saying to help them remember the sentence or even crate a short story with the spellings in it. If your child loves a puzzle, you can put the spellings in a word search or crossword or get them to create their own.
- Pre learning and re learning is the best approach with helping your child become a confident, competent speller. We have the annual overviews for each year group below so you can see what is coming up and what has been covered already.
Phonics
We are proud to use Unlocking Letters and Sounds. Unlocking Letters and Sounds was validated by the DfE in December 2021.
We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.
Please see here for an example of our Phase 2 GPC, picture, and action document.
In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, the children learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the graphemes and additional common exception Words. By the end of Year 1, children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling. In Year 1 all children are screened using the national phonics screening check.
In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive support to close identified gaps.
For further details please see here for the ‘Unlocking Letters and Sounds’ progression here.
To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to keep up through bespoke 1-1 interventions. These include GPC recognition and blending and segmenting interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have impact.
Phonics Screening Check
In 2012, the government introduced the statutory checking of a child’s understanding of phonics for Year One pupils. The Year One Phonics Screening Check is a national check of children’s phonic knowledge that all children in England are required to complete. The check combines a mixture of real and pseudo (nonsense) words which the children have to decode (read). The check takes place at the end of Year One. An example of the check published by the Department for Education can be found below:
