Phonics
At Hope School and College, we use the Twinkl Phonics programme to support the development of early reading and communication skills. We recognise that our pupils have a wide range of learning needs and that many are working at the earliest stages of pre-reading and communication development.
As a result, the delivery of phonics may look different across key stages, classes and learning pathways. Staff carefully adapt teaching approaches to meet the individual needs of pupils, ensuring that learning is meaningful, engaging and accessible.
For some learners, this may involve developing attention, listening, communication, sound awareness and early literacy skills through sensory and play-based experiences, while others may access a more structured phonics programme.
Our approach ensures that every pupil is supported to develop the foundations of reading at a pace that is appropriate to their developmental stage and individual learning journey.
What is Synthetic Phonics?
Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing in which words are broken up into their smallest units of sound or ‘phonemes’.
Pupils learn to associate a written letter or group of letters, known as ‘graphemes’, with each phoneme.
Sounds are then joined or ‘blended’ together into words for reading or, conversely, whole words are broken down or ‘segmented’ into their sounds for writing.
Sounds are taught in a prescribed order starting with s, a, t, p, i, n, as this allows for the most words to be made
Hope School and College has chosen the Twinkl Phonics scheme because it is flexible and multisensory. The scheme can also be delivered at a pace to suit the needs of classes and individuals within our school. The strategies used throughout the scheme which are: multisensory, practical and repetitive – these are excellent means of delivering a phonics curriculum for our pupils and young people.
The Twinkl Phonics scheme is as follows:-
Level 1 – within this level pupils learn to listen to/ respond and recognise different sounds. These listening skills are essential and build a basis of of early phonological awareness. This level involves lots of practical learning through games, activities and having fun with different sounds in the world around us.
By the end of Level 1, pupils will have had opportunities and experiences in:
- listening attentively;
- enlarging their vocabulary;
- speaking confidently to adults and others;
- discriminating between different sounds including phonemes;
- orally segmenting words into phonemes.
These learning opportunities are presented through 7 Aspects.
- Aspect 1 – Environmental Sounds
- Aspect 2 – Instrumental Sounds
- Aspect 3 – Body Percussion
- Aspect 4 – Rhythm and Rhyme
- Aspect 5 – Alliteration
- Aspect 6 – Voice Sounds
- Aspect 7 – Oral Blending and Segmenting
Level 2,3,4,5,6, – within these levels pupils are introduced to a range of individual letters and sounds. Pupils are encouraged to read, write, say, spell and sign individual words, graphemes and phonemes (letters and sounds). We use the suggested order of letters in a flexible way throughout school. In some departments the scheme may be ‘dipped into’ as an intervention for supporting individuals with targeted work.
What we love about Twink Phonics is that every letter/sound has a song and a ‘sign.’ for example:
Singing and signing are the best ways of helping pupils to engage with, respond and remember individual letters and sounds. In our classrooms we will also provide opportunities for – exploring sounds, mark making reading, writing, games and more.
Here is some of the terminology we need to know when teaching using Twinkl Phonics.
Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound in words
Grapheme – the written representation of a sound
GPC (Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence) – being able to match a phoneme with the correct grapheme and vice versa
Blending – joining individual speech sounds together to read a word
Segmenting – breaking down words into individual speech sounds to spell a word Digraph – two letters making one sound, e.g. ‘sh’
Trigraph – three letters making one sound, e.g. ‘igh’
Split digraph – two letters making one sound which are divided by a consonant, e.g. the i_e sound in the word ‘side’
Tricky/Common Exception Words – words that are not fully decodable, such as ‘the’ and ‘was’
Sound buttons – circles or spots that can be written underneath a sound to support reading
Sound bars – lines that can be written underneath digraphs or trigraphs to show that the letters make one sound
Mnemonic – a visual prompt to help children remember a sound
For more information on how we use Twinkl Phonics at Hope School and College, please contact the school office and they can help you further.
Hope School and College contact number:-01942824150