Phonics
Subject Champions
Mrs Cashin and Mrs Fox
As a team we are passionate about giving every child a strong foundation in Phonics. An awareness of letter sounds is the foundation upon which all other literacy skills can be built. We understand that the children need a high-quality, age-appropriate system that can support there ability to be reader of the future.
Vision
At Fairmeadows
- The children learn through the assignment of colour and the linkage of the sound, as well as seeing the colour, creating more ways of remembering the spelling.
- The games, songs and activities within the programme continuously reflect this way of learning, so that structure is constantly seen, heard and experienced by the children. This consistency is critical in ensuring that a complicated language is learnt in the most simplistic way.
- High-frequency words are learnt much faster with Monster Phonics. These words make up 65% of the words used in reading
- The colour-coded grapheme system is unique to Monster Phonics; each coloured grapheme is paired with a monster character that makes the same sound to give audio-visual prompts that help children ‘see’ each sound within a word and pronounce it correctly. Our monsters are really sound cues to help children remember how to read and pronounce graphemes
Aims and Goals
At Fairmeadows, we believe that providing engaging, fun and interactive phonics lessons is the key to successful and enthusiastic readers and writers. We have adopted the Monster Phonics scheme that uses fun characters to help the children engage with their learning, make connections and as a result make rapid progress with both their reading and writing.
Curriculum
Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are taught discrete daily phonics lessons. Each lesson focuses on a new phoneme (sound) whilst recapping and revisiting those previously taught. Lessons are based around a variety of games and tasks that help the children to engage and embed new learning into the long-term memory. Learn more about Monster Phonics below.
Monster Phonics. How it works.
Monster Phonics Books
As well as a range of learning through discussion in class, pictures, songs and other spoken activities we also have the full range of Monster phonics reading books in school. From Reception Black Cats in Stage 1, to complex stories suitable for advanced readers at Stage 10 in Year 2, the scheme closely aligns children's phonological awareness with these letters and sounds in print.
When they are working at Stage 1 in the scheme children are given a book a week. Outlined in the document below how to best use these texts to support your child at home.
To ensure they remain comfortable with other styles of text too, a non Monster Phonics text is sent home too. You may need to use their Monster phonics skills to blend unfamiliar words in these books, supporting where necessary.
Assessment
At Fairmeadows we agree that effective assessment of children's learning helps to ensure that each child makes good and better progress.
In every lesson, the children are given feedback to help them achieve their best. This may be in the form of written feedback or through discussions.
At three main points across the year the children's knowledge of sounds and spelling will be assessed by the class teacher and teaching assistant. This will inform planning and any SEND implications for the future.
Documents and useful links