Phonics at St Anne's Infants' is taught following the Fisher Family Trust Success for All Phonics programme. This is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme that has been validated by the DfE. Phonics is an integral part of the curriculum across our whole school. Phonics and shared reading lessons are taught daily to ensure that children develop the skills needed to become successful readers and writers. Children are regularly assessed and there are additional planned intervention groups for children needing extra support. Success for All Phonics comes with a selection of decodable shared readers which the children will take home each week to consolidate their learning from the classroom and to support their reading at home.

A narrated version of Success for All Phonics at St Anne's can be found here.

You may also find the Parent Portal useful to support your child’s phonics and early reading as there are a wealth of materials, helpful videos and tips for reading at home on this platform.

https://parents.fft.org.uk/

GPC mats

Please find below the Reception and Year 1 GPC mats which are used to support the children with writing words containing the GPCs. The children use the pictures to support them in finding the right GPC e.g. when looking for the /oa/ GPC, the children are able to find the 'goat in a boat' picture and make the association between the picture and the GPC.

Letter formations

For each letter of the alphabet the children will learn a short alliterative phrase to help them to learn how to form it correctly in their writing, e.g. for ‘c' it is 'curl around the caterpillar.’ These alliterative phrases are a great prompt to use with your child at home to support them in forming each letter of the alphabet correctly. Please ask your child's class teacher if you would like a hard copy of this resource (Reception families, these have been provided already for you to use at home).

Red Words

As the children progress through the phonics and shared reading programme, they will learn new 'red words' as well as consolidating previously taught red words. Red words are also known as 'common exception words' or 'sight words' as they require the children to be able to automatically read them rather than being able to segment and blend these. Knowing how to read these words quickly increases the fluency and pace of reading and therefore practising these regularly will really support your child's reading.

Below are the list of red words that children need to be able to read and write this year. The words in blue are words that all children will be able to read and write by the end of this year and the orange are supplementary words that will still need to be learnt.

Year One Phonics Screening Assessment

It is a statutory requirement for children in Year One to complete a phonics screening assessment. The purpose of the screener is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard.

The screener contains real and pseudo words (sometimes know as nonsense words or alien words). 

The assessment is carried out by your child's class teachers in a set week in June. The children complete practice screenings throughout the year as well as reading pseudo words as part of their phonics lessons, making the format of the screener very familiar to them. 

More information can be found below:

https://collins.co.uk/pages/what-is-the-phonics-screening-check 

Homework

At the end of each week, your child will be provided with Phonics homework which will allow them to practice their learning at home. This will cover a range of green (decodable) words, where they will use the sounds they have been taught, and new red words (non-decodable) that they need to red by sight. Your child may also be given some handwriting to practice.