Early Reading and Phonics

At Ellistown Primary School, reading is promoted as an intrinsic part of teaching and learning. The ability to read is not only the key to learning but it also has a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and future life chances.

As a school, we will ensure that our children are taught to read with fluency, accuracy and understanding through a variety of discreet and cross-curricular learning opportunities.

Above all, we want children in our school to become enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers. 

We want our children to fall in love with reading so that it brings them pleasure and allows them to experience new things, discover new worlds and explore the emotions of others. 

Phonics

At Ellistown we use Twinkl Phonics (a DfE validated full systematic, synthetic phonics programme)  to deliver quality phonics teaching to children from the very beginning of learning to read and write to full fluency. Twinkl phonics teaches in a clear and rigorous way so that skills are built progressively over time, ensuring that children have a secure base from which to develop. On top of that, all learning is embedded in the exciting adventures of Kit and Sam and their family and friends so you can be sure that your children will be excited by, and looking forward to, their daily phonics lessons!

Phonics Phases

Our phonics curriculum takes children through six levels, with children typically moving through levels1-4 during Reception, and then onto level 5 and 6 throughout Year 1 and 2.

​With lots of repetition and dailydevelopment of skills, we find that we are able to really build confidence and challenge children at an appropriate level.

Twinkl Phonics Guide for Parents

Level 1

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 different sounds including phonemes
• reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear in words
• orally segment words into phonemes.

Level 2

By the end of Level 2 , children will have had opportunities to:

• identify the phoneme when shown any Level 2 grapheme
• identify any Level 2 grapheme when they hear the phoneme
• orally blend and segment CVC words, such as ‘sat’ and ‘pat’
• blend sounds to read VC words, such as ‘if’, ‘am’, ‘on’ and ‘up’
• segment VC words into their sounds to spell them (using magnetic letters)
• read the tricky words (words that cannot be sounded out): the, to, I, no, go.

Level 3

By the end of Level 3 , children will have had opportunities to:

• say the phoneme when shown all or most Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes
• find all or most Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes, from a display, when given the phoneme
• blend and read CVC words (single-syllable words, consisting of three Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes) such as ‘chop’ and ‘night’
• segment and make phonetically plausible attempts at spelling CVC words (single-syllable words, consisting of three Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes) such as ‘paid’ and ‘seed’
• read the tricky words - he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are & spell the tricky words - the, to, I, no, go
• write each letter correctly when following a model.

Level 4

By the end of Level 4 , children will have had opportunities to:

• give the phoneme when shown any Level 2 or Level 3 grapheme
• find any Level 2 or Level 3 grapheme when given the phoneme
• blend and read words containing adjacent consonants, as well as segment and spell words containing adjacent consonants, such as ‘sand’, ‘bench’ and ‘flight’
• read the tricky words - some, one, said, come, do, so, were, when, have, there, out, like, little, what & spell the tricky words - he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, here, they, all, are
• write each letter, usually using the correct formation
• orally segment words into phonemes.

No new sounds are taught in Level 4.

Phase 5

By the end of Level 5 , children will have had opportunities to:

• give the phoneme, when shown any grapheme that has been taught
• for any given phoneme, write the common graphemes
• apply phonics knowledge and skills as the primary approach to reading and spelling unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable
• read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words, such as ‘dolphin’ and ‘fantastic’
• read automatically all taught tricky and common exception words
• accurately spell all the Level 2, 3 and 4 tricky words and most of the common exception words for reading
• form each letter correctly
• use alternative ways of pronouncing and representing the long vowel phonemes, e.g. ‘ea’ in ‘beak’, ‘ee’ in ‘seed’ and ‘y’ in ‘happy’.

Phase 6

By the end of Level 6 , children will have had opportunities to:

• read accurately most words of two or more syllables; • read most words containing common suffixes
• read most common exception words
• read most words accurately, in age-appropriate books, without overt sounding and blending, fluent enough to allow them to focus on their understanding rather than on decoding individual words
• sound out most unfamiliar words accurately, without undue hesitation
• segment spoken words into phonemes and represent these by graphemes, spelling many of these words correctly and making phonetically plausible attempts at others
• spell most common exception words correctly.

At this stage, children can read hundreds of words automatically. They are now reading for pleasure and reading to learn, rather than learning to read

Twinkl Phonics Progression