Phonics

Phonics at St Mary’s Fields Primary School

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St Mary’s Fields is a Universal school for the Knowledge Transfer Centre scheme for Phonics and Reading. This is a project for phonics and reading based on Letters and Sounds developed by Ann Smalberger, literacy consultant, called ALS Phoncs. ALS Phonics ensures a consistent approach from EYFS to KS1 and feeds into our provision for children in KS2 who arrive with no English. 

All children in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 have daily phonic sessions and also learn to read and spell ‘tricky’ words; words which don’t rely on phonics.

All children work through the following phases:

• Phase 1 focuses on listening, language and communication –recognising everyday sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration and orally blending and segmenting.

• Phase 2 focuses on learning all single sounds and how to read and write them in words.

• Phase 3 focuses on learning simple digraph and trigraph sounds and applying these to words and sentences (for example, igh, oo, ear and er).

• phase 4 focuses on learning adjacent consonants in words (for example, fl, pr, cr, and st).

• Phase 5 focuses on learning alternative digraph and trigraph sounds and

• applying these to words and sentences (for example, ie, ph, oe and ai).

Children in Year 2 start in September by recapping Phase 5 of phonics before moving on to spellings and grammar.

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See how the different phases are covered in each year group below:

Chestnut - Phase 1

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Hawthorn & Rowan - Phase 1 to Phase 3 in the Summer term.

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Year 1 - Phase 3 to Phase 5 in the Summer term

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Year 2 - Phase 5 to Phase 6 (Spelling focus)