At South Bersted Church of England Primary school we strive to ensure all children become fluent readers and confident writers by the end of Key Stage 1.

In reception, we begin our phonics journey by consolidating the learning that will have already taken place in a nursery or preschool.  Children will be supported to recognise a range of sounds; environmental, instrumental, rhyme and alliteration as well as some initial letter sounds they may have learnt.

We will then begin a daily timetable of whole class phonics that begin by introducing children to individual letter sounds using the Supersonic Phonic Friends programme and then moving onto more complex vowel and consonant diagraphs (two letters making one sound) and trigraphs (three letters making one sound).  We use a range of strategies and programmes to teach phonics to ensure that children are engaged and enjoy the sessions.

An Introduction to Supersonic Phonic Friends

This year we will be teaching phonics using Supersonic Phonic Friends.  This programme is a fully systematic phonic approach created by Phonics’ expert, Anna Lucas and beautifully designed by artist, Fiona Cameron.

The programme begins with Firm Foundations in Phonics 1 which is aligned to Phase 1 from Letters and Sounds and will be used in the first few weeks of reception.

The Basics, Phonics 2 and 3 will be taught in Reception class with the basics 4 and the Higher Level Phonics 5 being taught throughout Year 1.

To find out more, click on the link below to explore the Supersonic Phonic Friends website:

https://www.supersonicphonicfriends.co.uk/

Also, below please find the Supersonic Phonic Friends progression document and the Supersonic Phonic Friends presentation from the recent Parent Information Meeting:

Supersonic Phonic Friends Progression Document

Supersonic Phonic Friends Presentation 2022

Bedtime Breakfast Event – Presentation

  • Phase Two (Reception)

    The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. By the end of the phase many children should be able to read some VC and CVC words and to spell them either using magnetic letters or by writing the letters on paper or on whiteboards. During the phase they will be introduced to reading two-syllable words and simple captions.

  • Phase Three (Reception)

    The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme. Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. They will learn letter names during this phase, learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words.

  • Phase Four (Reception and Year 1)

    No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words

  • Phase Five (Throughout Year 1)

    The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant.