Hello. My name is Mrs Heasman and one of my leadership responsibilities here at Meopham Community Academy is as Assistant Headteacher for Early Years and Key Stage 1. One of my responsibilities within this role is to oversee and guide how we teach phonics in the first years of our children's education.
I have set up our phonics page to be used to inform and advertise the schemes that we use here at Meopham Community Academy to improve the attainment and progress of our younger pupils in phonics.
I hope that you will find these resources useful and a first point of reference should you wish to know more on how we approach this area of learning here at meopham Community Academy.
Assistant Headteacher
RWI Phonics Lessons at Home from Monday 1st June
From the beginning of June all RWI phonics lessons will be streamed at 9.30 am. Speed Sound lessons for Sets 2 and 3 will include new words for reading and spelling.
New daily films:
Read longer words: for children who can read Set 3 sounds and words confidently.
Read Red Words 1: for children who are reading Red, Green, Purple, Pink and Orange Read Write Inc. Storybooks.
Read Red Words 2: for children who are reading Yellow, Blue and Grey Read Write Inc. Storybooks.
Read and Hold a Sentence 1 (from 15th June): reading and writing practice for children reading Green, Purple, Pink and Orange Read Write Inc. Storybooks. (For children reading and writing with Set 1 sounds confidently and learning Set 2 sounds.)
Read and Hold a Sentence 2 (from 15th June): reading and writing practice for children reading Yellow, Blue and Grey Read Write Inc. Storybooks. (For children reading and writing words with Set 2 sounds confidently and learning Set 3 sounds.)
Films are streamed live and will be available for 24hrs after the live broadcast.
Follow this link for the lessons and lots more information:
Dear Parents,
The children really enjoy singing the Tricky Word songs when we are at school. We use these songs to help the children recognise tricky words in a fun way, we also practise writing the tricky words too. Perhaps you could sing them at home whilst we can not be at school. Best Wishes.
There has been a huge shift in the past few years in how we teach reading in UK schools. Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught in helping them learn to read. Our phonics teaching here at Meopham runs alongside other teaching methods, such as guided reading (reading in a small group with the class teacher) to help children develop all the essential reading skills they need to succeed in their education. Through the way we teach reading and phonics at Meopham, we also strive to instill in the children a real love of reading, which can stay with them throughout school and into adult life too.
Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words.
In phonics lessons children are taught three main things:
GPC
Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences. This simply means that they are taught all the phonemes in the English language and ways of writing them down. These sounds are taught in a particular order. The first sounds to be taught are s, a, t, p
Blending
Children are taught to blend initial sounds. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are then able to merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is e.g. m-a-t = mat.
Segmenting
Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it down into the phonemes that it is made up of. This skill is vital in being able to spell words.
As a school we base our phonics teaching on the Read Wrtie Inc. speed sounds lessons with some modification. Read Write Inc. provides a structured and systematic approach to teaching phonics. It is used by more than a quarter of the UK's primary schools and is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers.
At Meopham, our phonics programme meets the higher expectations of the National Curriculum and we use effective assessment to accelerate every child's progress.
Teachers can further supplement their teaching of phonics by using materials from other schemes. We use “Letters and Sounds” and “Sounds-write” where appropriate.
Please follow the link below to our 'Attainment' page to see our progress trends in Year 1 Phonics over the last 3 years.
Children are taught to recognise the sounds and to put them together (blend them) into words for reading.
As a school we follow the RWI Phonics teaching Program called 'Speed Sounds' and use this to teach children phonics in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. This program was introduced across these three year groups in 2016 and has been very successful.
Mrs Heasman, Assistant Headteacher and Phonics Lead
When teaching the letter sounds, it is important to remember to keep them very ‘pure’ and distinct, to help with sound-blending later on. To enable your child to gain confidence in reading, they should only be asked to read words containing letter sounds they know securely.
To learn to read children need to:
In the new story books there are several features which set them apart from the old style phonics books we have previously used:
The 'Oxford Owl' website has plenty of eBooks which are completely FREE!!
If you follow this link:
Follow the link and click on the 'Series' tab then select 'Read Write Inc'. To read the books you will need to register which doesn't take long at all. Once registered and logged in, you can choose from the selection of Read Write Inc books should you have finished reading your child's current book that they took home.
I have been informed by Read Write Inc that they will be adding more free ebooks to this page over the next few days and weeks.
This is excellent news as it will enable the children to continue to read through the scheme at home.
The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is a way for teachers in England and Wales to ensure that children are making sufficient progress with their phonics skills to read words and are on track to become fluent readers who can enjoy reading for pleasure and for learning.
Due to Covid 19 the government Phonics Screening Check 2021 has been cancelled. It has been confirmed that this will no longer be going ahead this year.
Please find below a copy of the Phonics Screening Check information for parents:
We will always let you know how well your child is doing.
We use various ways to find out how the children are getting on in reading. We use the information to decide what phonics group they should be in. Your child will work with children who are at a similar phonics level as him or her. Children will move to a different group if they are making faster progress than the others. Your child will have small group support if we think he or she needs some extra help to keep up.
We also use a reading test so that we can make sure that all our children are at the level that they should be for their age compared to all the children across the country.
In the summer term, the government asks us to do a phonics check of all the Year 1 children. That gives us extra information about their progress. We will talk to you about how well your child has done, and especially if we have any worries at all.
We want children to learn to read, however long it takes us to teach them. We will find out very quickly if your child is finding reading difficult. First, we move children to a different group, so that we can make sure that they have learnt what they need to know. If they still struggle, we give them extra support.
If we have any serious worries about your child’s reading, we will talk to you about this.
Some children take a bit longer to learn to put sounds together to read a word, e.g. c-a-t to make the word ‘cat’. At our meeting, we will explain how you can help your child to do this.
You can also try these online resources to help your child with phonics:
By the end of Year 2, your child should be able to read aloud books that are at the right level for his or her age. In Year 3 we concentrate even more on helping children to understand what they are reading, although this work begins very early on. This happens when the teacher reads to the children and also when the children read their own story book.
It matters a lot if your child misses school. The way we teach children to read is very well organised, so even one missed lesson means that your child has not learnt something that they need to know to be a good reader.
The way we teach reading is especially helpful for children who might be dyslexic. This is because we use a very well-organised programme that has a strong focus on phonics. This is very important for children who find learning to read difficult. If you are worried about your child, please come and talk to us.
This isn’t a problem for learning to read as long as we know what sound the child is trying to say. This is not something to worry about. Many children have a few sounds that they can hear clearly but find it difficult to say, particularly the l-sound, r-sound, w-sound, th-sound, s-sound, sh-sound and j-sound. Often they say a t-sound for the c-sound; "tttssh" for the s-sound; "w" for the r-sound and "r" for the l-sound. You can help your child by encouraging him or her to look at your mouth when you say the sound. Whatever you do, do not make your child feel a failure. They can easily learn to read, even if they find one or two sounds difficult to say.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any concerns. We are here to help.