Reception

In Reception, phonics is taught by the class teacher during the autumn term. From the spring term onwards, children are streamed into ability groups to ensure targeted teaching and support.

Teachers use Phonics Tracker to monitor each child’s progress, identify the sounds they still need to master, and plan interventions as needed.

Year 2

Children who do not pass the Phonics Screening Check in Year 1 continue with Jolly Phonics lessons to support their progress and are reassessed in Year 2 during the summer term. 

Key Stage 2 (KS2)

For children entering KS2 who have not yet mastered phonics, targeted intervention groups are provided. These sessions focus on blending and segmenting to ensure every child can achieve fluency in reading and develop spelling knowledge.

Reading with Phonics

All children that receive phonics lessons read books that closely match their ability. These are directly from Jolly Phonics and align with the scheme to ensure they can read with fluency and accuracy.

Glossary of Terms for Phonics

• Blending: Combining individual sounds to read a word (e.g., c-a-t becomes "cat").

• Segmenting: Breaking a word into its individual sounds to spell it (e.g., "dog" becomes d-o-g).

• Nonsense Words: Made-up words used to assess a child’s ability to decode sounds (e.g., "zog").

• Phonics Screening Check: A national assessment for Year 1 children to test their phonics knowledge.

• Phonics Tracker: An online tool used to monitor children’s phonics progress and identify areas for improvement.

• Jolly Phonics: A program that teaches phonics through actions, songs, and stories to make learning engaging.