Reading and Phonics
Rocket Phonics
At Lothersdale, we follow Rocket Phonics as our systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme. We follow this programme with absolute fidelity so that all children have a consistent learning experience of phonics. Systematic phonics is a way of teaching children to read. Children are taught to read letters or groups of letters by sating the sound (s) that they represent. As they become more confident, children are then able to read words by blending (synthesising) the sounds together to make a word. When they have been taught all of the necessary grapheme phoneme correspondence, they will be able to apply these to read a word by blending these sounds together.
Rocket Phonics Reading Planet
All reading books in KS1 and some in KS2 are matched carefully to the children’s phonic level, using the Reading Planet Rocket Phonics banded book collection. Matched to the Rocket Phonics programme, all of the Reading Planet books are fully decodable, meaning children can be carefully matched with their books to enable them to read them accurately, confidently and independently.
Pupil Practice Booklets
Each child has their own practice booklet. There is a new booklet for each term, so 6 booklets in total over reception and year 1. The booklets give the children a consistent approach to practicing and applying their new learning. For each new sound, there is a page for blending and segmenting.
Sound Mat
There are four sound mats within the scheme. They show each new phoneme grapheme correspondence and a picture and word mnemonic to support learning.
Big Book
The big book is used ad the main teaching tool for blending. Each big book follows the phonics progression and introduces the new phoneme grapheme correspondence.
Assessment
Every phonics lesson begins with a revisit and review activity. This is used as a daily assessment tool. We also use half termly Rocket Phonics assessment tools matched to our phonics progression as our summative assessment. At the end of year 1, the children also take part in a phonics screening check.