Phonics

Monster Phonics

Monster Phonics is our whole school Phonics scheme. Monster Phonics is a DfE validated child-centred phonics programme. We believe that our programme and approach to phonics gives our children the best opportunity to be successful with early reading as well as empowering our teachers with excellent subject knowledge and high-quality planning and resources. This ensures children enjoy and get the most from their phonics lessons.

Monster Phonics uses a systematic colour-coding of graphemes linked to phoneme monsters which makes phonics easier to understand. The phonics activities are multi-sensory requiring reading, writing, singing and actions.

A Phonetic skill or phoneme is mastered when the children can read confidently and apply the phoneme in a range of words, unaided. The children should be able to apply the sound and their segmenting and blending to a range of real and nonsense words.

In the Autumn Term we offer a meeting for parents to support their understanding of how we teach phonics in Early Years and Year 1.

The Monster Phonics Website

Teaching Approach

Staff across school have completed Monster phonics training level 1 and 2. This ensures that there is consistency across the school which is key to its success. Any children identified as not meeting the learning objectives that day are identified and picked up for same day keep up intervention. Regular and efficient monitoring of children’s development in phonics is essential if they are to become competent and confident readers, and subsequently writers. The Monster Phonics programme has a clearly mapped out set of assessments which allows for checking children’s grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC), knowledge of High-Frequency Words (HFWs) and Common Exception Words (CEWs) for reading and writing.

All teachers ensure that phonics is embedded throughout daily classroom practice. Focused phonics intervention and in class support is provided for those who still require phonics in Year 3 and KS2.

Phonics Screening Check Year One

All Year One children are formally assessed at the end of the year by an unseen government Phonic Screening Check. The children are asked to decode real words and ‘alien words’. Results of this screening check are reported to parents. Any child who does not reach the expected standard in Year One will receive appropriate support and repeat the check in Year Two.

Home Reading Books

All children are encouraged to read at home daily through individual year group reading incentives. We have invested in the Monster Phonics reading scheme which provides fully decodable books aligned to the programme. Reception children upwards receive weekly Guided Reading group sessions, where they can practice and apply their phonics skills to a variety of texts.