Phonics Curriculum Statement

“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.” — Kate DiCamillo

At Willow Brook, we nurture the needs of every child as they progress from learning their first sounds in Reception until they become a fluent and confident reader.

Our intent is to:

• Teach phonics systematically with regular consolidation and revision to ensure the success of every child.
• Deliver high-quality systematic synthetic phonics sessions daily, with additional support for those who need it.
• Give children the tools and practice they need to read with independence and confidence.
• Enable and facilitate the success of every child.
• Teach comprehension and language skills alongside word reading.
• Work in partnership with families to share and support early reading at home.
• Promote a love of reading in every child.

To implement this we:

• Teach children to read using Oxford Reading Tree’s Floppy’s Phonics program and all members of staff who teach and support phonics have been trained in its delivery.
• Teach phonics daily and systematically, with many opportunities for children to practice and use their phonics skills.
• Recognise that children make progress at different rates and offer challenges and additional support within our daily phonics sessions and throughout the day.
• Closely monitor the progress of every child and respond swiftly to their current needs.
• Match every child’s reading book carefully to their current phonic knowledge to ensure their success and promote a positive attitude towards reading. They will take home a book that contains an appropriate level of challenge for their current needs, this is constantly reviewed for every child’s individual reading journey and to give them a wide range of reading experiences.
• Share our phonics learning with families at curriculum evenings and through phonics folders which are sent home weekly.
• Promote comprehension and language skills within our phonics sessions and throughout the day.
• Immerse the children at Willow Brook in a vast and varied selection of high-quality stories, non-fiction books and poetry to broaden their reading experiences. Our story-focused topics host many interactive and exciting opportunities for the children to engage with and become engrossed in.
• Have dedicated story time in our classrooms. We encourage children to question and respond to texts with their own ideas and to relate them to their own personal experiences.

Impact

The impact of our carefully planned phonics curriculum is demonstrated in every child at Willow Brook, they:

• Are highly motivated and eager to join in during phonics sessions, they relish opportunities for incidental phonics learning and are excited for their next steps.
• Make progress quickly.
• Use phonics to accurately decode and read words in their carefully matched reading books.
• Take pride in demonstrating their phonics skills when reading at home and at school.
• Challenge themselves when reading and are ambitious in their word choices when writing.
• Are resilient and keep trying when they make mistakes, they know how to ask for help when they need it.
• Enjoy reading and learning to read.
• Confidently and independently use classroom resources and displays to aid their independence in both reading and writing.

Other information:

PowerPoint – Phonics and Early Reading Explained

Phonics and Reading Curriculum Evening 2022

Links to the Autumn Term’s Phonics Presentation:

Phonics and early reading curriculum evening Early Learning Goals explained