Phonics and Early Reading

The purpose of reading from the national curriculum programme of study: ‘Skilled word reading involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Underpinning both is the understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words. This is why phonics should be emphasised in the early teaching of reading to beginners (i.e. unskilled readers) when they start school."

Our ambition for phonics and early reading:

We aim to provide high-quality phonics sessions to ensure that all children become competent and confident readers and writers. We aim to secure skills of word recognition and decoding which will enable children to read fluently.

Our Phonics curriculum ensures that all children make good, or better, progress in phonics regardless of their age, gender, ability or background.

Our pupils will:

get off to a good start in the EYFS completed phase 4 phonics by the end of the Reception year.
develop into skilled readers who develop a comprehensive understanding of words, language and texts
make good progress in phonics and ready progress regardless of their ability & background
develop a love of reading so that they can read for purpose and for pleasure.

Pearson Bug Club Phonics

Bug Club Phonics is one of the DfE’s approved phonics teaching programmes and aims to help the children in our schools learn to read by the age of six in a fun and accessible way. Following its own proven progression, the whole school programme matches the National Curriculum and Early Learning Goals.

Effective Learning

We acknowledge that children learn in many different ways and we recognise the need to develop strategies that allow all children to learn most effectively. We take into account the different ways that children learn when planning and teaching in order to ensure all children access a full and varied curriculum.

04-Why-Bug-Club-Phonics-FINAL.pdf

Planning and delivery

There are 4 elements to a Bug Club Phonics session: review, teach, practise and apply.

Introduction and Revision - Flashcards can be used daily to recap graphemes previously taught,then a brief review of the previous week/days learning. This section should be very fast paced and allow children to apply their prior learning quickly.

Teach – This section should have some new learning and teach reading or writing skills using the GPC being taught.

Practise and apply – This section should allow children to practise their reading/writing skills. This could be done with words, phrases or sentences. Children should be supported where necessary and work amongst peers e.g. playing games together to apply their teach section.

Review - A recap of the GPC that has been taught. Books/online homework task can be set as extra consolidation.

Bug-Club-Phonics-Progression-Chart-Oct-21.pdf

Bug Club Progression

This chart shows the order in which we teach the GPCs and tricky words; the latter are taught by drawing children’s attention to the unusual part of the spelling and letting them work out the rest for themselves using the taught GPCs and then blending for reading. This progression, and the method, follows what Pearson's research has shown to be very effective in rapidly developing independent reading skill in children. The progression includes the early introduction of simple plurals and the ‘s’ forms of verbs, as these are very common and open up children very quickly to a richer reading experience, as evidenced by our research.

Daily lessons include revision not only of the previous day’s new GPC, but the words that were read the day before are used for spelling and vice versa, for consolidation. Children quickly move to reading captions and sentences, and decodable readers are introduced from the 10th lesson. The lessons are in short, discrete sections which are repeated daily.

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