As a school we have adopted ‘Supersonic Phonics Friends’, to support us with the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. This ensures a consistent approach across Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1.
Supersonic Phonic Friends is an enchanted adventure of phonics where along the way children will meet several friendly woodland characters who represent each literacy skill involved. Supported by the children’s new ‘Supersonic friends’ and rhyming captions and phrases, this approach ensures children develop the confidence to apply each skill to their own reading and writing.
During the Foundation Stage year children are introduced to phonemes and their corresponding graphemes. We begin to look at single letter sounds and the representing spelling for this – spelling for the sounds.
Each spelling for the sound has a picture and an action, for example “squishy squishy strawberry.”
Children then begin to read and write three letter words; matching the grapheme to the sound they can hear.
As they become confident and fluent readers and writers of CVC words children are then introduced to digraphs; where two letters make one sound. Throughout the whole of the reception year our phonic teaching relies on the firm foundations of orally blending and segmenting and is deep rooted in rhythm and rhyme. By the end of EYFS children should be fluent with all 44 sounds; including one way to represent them. Children are also introduced to ‘Nonsense Nan’ who will guide them through how to read alien and real words.
In Year 1 children develop their ability to hear and remember more than three sounds in a row and explore adjacent consonants to read CVCC and CCVC words such as ‘think, coast and blink’. They also become fluent at recognising and applying alternative sounds for the 44 graphemes they learnt in Foundation Stage and are introduced to alternative ways to make each of the digraphs they have previously learnt. Through the use of the characters ‘Switch it Mitch’ and ‘Choose to Use Suze’ they recognise spelling patterns and rules to identify which spelling they need to represent the sound. By the end of Year 1 children will have had access to over 100 spellings to make the 44 sounds.
Children learn to read ‘tricky words’ with Tricky Tess. Tricky words are words that cannot be read by decoding.
Tricky Tess helps to work out the tricky part of the word, “We need to work out what is the tricky part of the word. If it is in blue I will show you what to do.”
From Year 2, we continue to explore grapheme phoneme correspondence and learn spelling rules to support our reading and writing development. Supersonic Phonic Friends allows us access to a tailored programme of spelling rules for both children in Year 1 and Year 2.
All lessons are delivered using a consistent set of slides provided by the phonic scheme. They follow the structure of:
During this part of the session, children will recap on the spellings for the sounds and tricky words or high frequency words previously taught and oral blending and segmenting activities.
This is the part of the lesson where new learning takes place. Children will be introduced to the characters who are a key part in the steps in learning. Helpful phrases with actions are used to engage and stimulate the children, providing a multisensory approach. The children are orally introduced to a new spelling for the sound and taught how to orally blend and segment words containing that sound. They will be shown the grapheme to represent the sound and then the teacher models blending, reading and writing.
During this section children are given the opportunity to read and write words containing the new spelling for the sound as well as orally spell and blend words with their phonic buddy. They will use a range of resources to embed their new learning; ensuring there is an equal balance of reading and writing.
In every lesson, children will be given an application task where they are expected to read and write new words and sounds within a caption or a sentence. This allows children to see their new learning in a context and to further embed their vocabulary and fluency. They will also apply tricky words and high-frequency words to their reading or writing.
Within this structure all children become familiar with the characters and know the roles of their jobs. Children are given an equal balance of reading and writing phonic activities to ensure there is equal weighting to their application of skills.
As a school we have a range of texts to support children and their reading development and these are categorised by the spellings for the sounds they contain.
All reading books are matched to the spellings for the sounds children have covered in school to ensure we maximise their ability to apply their new knowledge and these books are read both within school and then sent home for children to further embed the skills.
Supersonic Phonic Friends is a programme rooted in the belief that “wrapping the children in lessons full rhyme will allow children to achieve every time,” and that the careful and rigorous assessment will allow children at risk of falling behind to be pinpointed quickly and teachers can intervene effectively.