Fishing for Phonics
At Castle Hill Primary School we use a phonics scheme that we have created ourselves called Fishing for Phonics that has been validated by the DfE.
Fishing for Phonics (FfP) is a systematic synthetic scheme that has been developed to link talking, reading, spelling and handwriting for children in the Early Years, Year 1 and Year 2.
Children will start the scheme in the Early Years by developing their phonological awareness through 2 weeks of “Paddling with Phonics”. They will then progress on to learning phoneme grapheme correspondences and segmenting and blending skills. Lessons link to handwriting development, and there are ideas for continuous provision for EYFS and Year 1. Phonological awareness will continue through the first half term of teaching.
The scheme links learning to read with learning to write and form letters correctly. By teaching letter formation in groups according their formation patterns, we can build sequentially on the motor pathways. And when we do this, we continually reinforce how the letters are formed. This means that we can lay down the motor pathways for letter formation more efficiently.
The children will learn to use segmenting and blending skills to decode and encode words. Decodable books reinforce the skills they learn during the phonics lessons, enabling children to practise segmenting and blending. They will also develop their ability to read ‘fishy words’. (Common exception words). The scheme develops sight vocabulary, which will help with reading fluency. The books aim to develop vocabulary, and give parents ideas about questions to ask their children whilst sharing simple books with them.
In Early Years the children are introduced to daily phonics sessions in the first few weeks of starting school.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) suggests:
“Phonics approaches have been consistently found to be effective in supporting younger readers to master the basics of reading, with an average impact of an additional four months’ progress. Research suggests that phonics is particularly beneficial for younger learners (4-7 year olds) as they begin to read.”
In KS1 the children also take part in daily phonics sessions to further develop their phonic knowledge.
We teach the children a rhyme and action for the letter formation to help them learn the letter (grapheme) by seeing it, hearing it and by ‘doing it’ (kinesthetic).
Alongside introducing the phonemes (sounds) and the graphemes (the written letters) we also teach the children to blend and segment, which are the first steps in reading.
