Phonics

The Parkside Phonics Programme
At Parkside we follow the Twinkl phonics scheme and have established a progressive, consistent phonics curriculum where children will progress and succeed.

Twinkl phonics is a systematic synthetic phonics programme, approved by the Department for Education (DfE).  Through high quality phonics teaching we give all children a solid base upon which to build as they progress through school. This also helps children to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.  

Delivered through the stories and adventures of Kit, Sam and the Twinkl Phonics family, the scheme builds and develops the skills and understanding children need to become effective, independent readers and writers.  Children will only encounter texts which are fully decodable for their phonics knowledge.

We build continuously on prior learning and start at level one, in our preschool, which lays the foundation for all reading and writing development. Throughout Level 1, young learners develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to use and discriminate between auditory, environmental and instrumental sounds through 7 Aspects. 

By the end of Level 1, children will have had opportunities to:

• listen attentively; 

• enlarge their vocabulary; 

• speak confidently to adults and other children; 

• discriminate between different sounds including phonemes; 

• reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear in words; 

• orally segment words into phonemes.

Level two starts in Reception, focusing on the Letters and Sounds, a way of teaching children to read by linking phonemes and the symbols they represent, which are called graphemes or letter groups. Children will also learn the alphabet and common exception words. Teachers will use a variety of help and support scaffolds to aid children's learning of these including interactive activities, stories, mnemonics (which create a visual link to the grapheme and phoneme), actions, letter formation rhymes and songs.

Level three, later on in reception, introduces another 25 graphemes, including consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs and trigraphs so that children can represent 42 phonemes with a grapheme; continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation; apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions.

Level four at the end of reception and revised in Year One consolidates children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words, especially digraphs and trigraphs; introduce words with adjacent consonants - CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC, CCCVC, CVCCC, CCCVCC, CCVCCC; learn polysyllabic words and learn to read and spell some more tricky words.  

Level five, taught in Year One, teaches alternative graphemes for known phonemes; alternative pronunciations of known graphemes; introduces split digraphs; introduces suffixes and prefixes; practises reading and spelling more common exception words.

Throughout level 6 in Year Two children:

• develop knowledge of spelling patterns and best-guess grapheme selection; 

• learn more alternative graphemes for known phonemes; 

• learn more alternative pronunciations for known graphemes; 

• introduce the /zh/ phoneme; 

• develop an understanding of the spelling rules for adding suffixes and prefixes; 

• introduce homophones/near homophones and contractions; 

• learn to spell more common exception words; 

• develop their understanding of grammar rules; 

• learn effective writing techniques including editing and proofreading and learn more strategies to read and write independently.

How can I help my child with classroom skills at home?

One useful way of helping your child to understand phonics is by reading books with them at home. Each child will also have a decodable phonics book to take home matched to their phonics level, consolidating what they have been working on at school. Ask your children to use what they've learnt already in their phonics lessons and apply the ideas to the book that you're reading together. Can you spot any of these graphemes in your library book too? This will help the children become more confident when reading independently. We will also send home a fantastic visual aid as a prompt that will give your learner a reference point whilst they build their skills and confidence.