Phonics

At Winhills, we follow the FFT's Success for All Phonics programme. The programme is used daily from the beginning of Reception, enabling children to make a smooth transition to KS1. The daily lesson plans cover all the main Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) and Common Exception Words (CEWs) to provide children with the phonic knowledge and skills required for success in the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check. Daily lessons are carefully sequenced and introduce new learning in an easy to follow progression.

Success for All Phonics provides 68 fully decodable reading books (Shared Readers) that are used in daily Guided Reading lessons and are aligned to the phonics sessions that the children are being taught.

As the children progress through school, they may need extra catch up sessions using the Success for All Phonics programme. Tutoring with the Lightning Squad is used for children who need further support after Year 1 to support their progress in phonics and reading.

In Phonics lessons, the children:

• Learn new Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs)
• Practise the skills of blending and segmenting as new GPCs are introduced
• Learn Common Exception Words by sight
• Engage in a variety of activities to support their learning in fun and memorable ways
• Link pictures and mnemonics to support the learning of each GPC and help them to remember it

Trust Phonics Statement

Our trust ambition is to ensure our children thrive, achieve and succeed and that our schools are the best they can be, serving the community they are part of. As part of this, we celebrate the

unique nature of each great school at the heart of its community. Our ethos and values of ‘nurture, inspire, flourish’ encourage a bespoke curriculum that meets the needs of each community.

The implementation of these core elements and principles will provide all children with the support, knowledge and skills they are entitled to learn. We aim to make every lesson count. We are highly ambitious for all our children, irrespective of their background or academic prowess.

All staff know the key knowledge and skills that children should achieve at the end of each year and learning is carefully planned to meet these points. We aim to ensure all our children have the

essential support, basic skills, knowledge and love of learning to be ready to thrive in the next stage of their education.

The Diamond Learning Partnership Trust confirms that our schools have the choice to use any systematic synthetics phonics programme proven to support good outcomes for our children.

The implementation and systematic delivery of the chosen phonics programme is key to its success. If, for whatever reason, a school had phonics outcomes below national, the Trust will intervene at the earliest opportunity, analyse the quality of phonics teaching and insist on an alternative phonics programme if needed.