Phonics
At Gunthorpe Primary School we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One and believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a whole language approach that promotes a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.
The Rose Report (2006) emphasised high quality phonics as an important part of the word decoding skills required by children to develop higher level whole language and comprehension skills. This approach is in alignment with our belief that we first ‘learn to read’ and then ‘read to learn’.
For more details about how this is lived out at Gunthorpe please download and read our policy found below. There are also a selection of documents we hope will be helpful to support your child at home.
Phonics information for parents
Phonics at Gunthorpe Primary School
Fast Phonics Five
In order to ensure that the children are accessing reading suited to their abilities and to consolidate the sounds that they have been exposed to and continue to learn within their daily phonics, we have developed a 'Fast Phonics Five' scheme that enables parents to follow up their child's phonics learning at home.
Each activity is designed to last no longer than 5 minutes. The extract consists of many words that contain the focus sound(s) from that week, along with RED words.
Parents are supported to discuss the text with their child using the 'parent prompt' section at the bottom of the sheet to encourage talk, questioning and comprehension and retrieval skills. The child can then draw an image to demonstrate their comprehension of the extract.
Starting in the Spring Term, these tasks will be sent home weekly and can contribute to the children's target of 4 weekly reads per week. These are in addition to the age appropriate, book banded, books that are selected for each child to take home.
An selection of Fast Phonic Five examples are below