Phonics and Spelling

Phonics Teaching

At Marsh Hill, we use Our systematic phonics programme in line with the ‘Letters and Sounds’ approach which has been amended to meet and exceed the expectations of the National Curriculum and the needs of our children.

All planning is systematic and progressive and is in line with the school’s term-by –term phonics long-term plan. Phonics is taught by highly skilled practitioners. Resources, terminology and phrases used to facilitate the teaching of phonics is uniform across the school; we do not mix phonics schemes or resources in our school.

Phonics teaching is prioritised; it is taught discreetly for 25 minutes every morning. Children are taught in ability groups, across their year group. Groups are determined through rigorous assessment so that the teaching of phonics is matched to the children’s current level of skill and phonemic awareness.

Each session follows the same systematic structure of:

• Revisit (previous sounds and common exception words taught),
• Teach (new sound and Common Exception Words)
• Practise
• Apply new sounds and words taught in word/sentence reading and writing.

The sounds and words taught are divided into 3 progressive stages and the expectations of coverage are:

• Phase 2, 3 and 4: Taught in Reception
• Phase 5: Taught throughout Year One
• Phase 6: Year 2.  Once children have a good command of phonic knowledge and use this competently to blend and segment, children move onto learning the rules of spelling following the Purple Mash Spelling Programme.

Please see Appendix 1: Phonics Long Term Plan to see the progression of sounds and words taught at each stage.