At Great Abington we have reviewed our phonics provision to ensure that we maximise the opportunities for all our readers. We have used the phonics validation process used by the DfE to quality assure the provision we have in place and to highlight areas to develop. We very much see phonics and its role within reading as a continuous learning journey that permeates through all areas of the curriculum.

At Great Abington our phonics provision:

• Is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme focusing on decoding as the main strategy for reading
• Starts on day one for our Reception children

• Enables children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills early in reception, and provides a structured route for most children to meet or exceed the expected standard in the year one (Y1) Phonics Screening Check and all national curriculum expectations for word reading through decoding by the end of key stage 1

• Is designed around daily teaching sessions and teaches the main grapheme-phoneme correspondences of English (the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence

• Progresses from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and skills, cumulatively covering all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English

• Provides opportunity for children to practise and apply known phoneme-grapheme correspondences for spelling through dictation of sounds, words and sentences

• Ensures that children are taught to decode and spell common exception words (sometimes called ‘tricky’ words), appropriate to their level of progress in the programme

• Provides resources that support the teaching of lower-case and capital letters correctly, with clear start and finish points. The programme should move children on by teaching them to write words made up of learned GPCs, followed by simple sentences composed from such words as well as any common exception words (‘tricky words’) learned

• Is built around direct teaching sessions, with extensive teacher-child interaction and involves a multi-sensory approach

• Provides resources that enable staff to teach phonics effectively including sufficient decodable reading material to ensure that, as children move through the early stages of acquiring phonic knowledge and skills, they can practise by reading texts closely matched to their level of phonic attainment, that do not require them to use alternative strategies to read unknown words

• Guidance and resources to ensure children practise and apply the core phonics they have been taught

• Enable children’s progress to be assessed and supports meeting the needs of those who are at risk of falling behind, including the lowest attaining 20% of children

• Provides full guidance for teachers to support the effective delivery of phonics through quality training opportunities