Phonics in EYFS & KS1
Phonics in EYFS and KS1
"One of the greatest gifts adults can give is to read to children" Carl Sagan
Phonics is a huge part of EYFS and KS1 and is an essential aspect of the curriculum that will enable your child to thrive at school. Phonics works hand-in-hand with other areas of the curriculum such as, writing and reading.
At Rowsley C of E Primary School, we follow the Little Wandle - Letters and Sounds Revised Programme. We teach daily phonic lessons and assess children half termly.
Below, are some resources that include information about the programme and how you can support your child at home.
Phonics Screening Check
In Summer term, Year 1's will be completing a Phonics Screening Check. During the Phonics Screening Check, children are asked to read (decode) 40 words. Most of these words are real words but some are pseudo-words (made up). Pseudo-words are included to ensure that children are using their decoding skills and not just relying on their memory of words they’ve read before.
The test is divided into two sections. Section 1 is the easier part. In this section, children are asked to recognise simple word structures and Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) from the earlier phases of the phonics curriculum. In 2019, real words included in Section 1 were words like ‘shop’, ‘peel’ and ‘yell’. Section 2 is the trickier part of the test. Here, children need to recognise GPCs from the later stages of the phonics curriculum. They also encounter graphemes that correspond to more than one phoneme (e.g. the grapheme ‘ea’ represents different phonemes in the words bread and bead.)
Below, I have put some activities you can do with your child to practice for the Phonics Screening Check. There is also a guide for parents explaining what the check is and how you can help at home.