Supersonic Phonic Friends is a fully systematic synthetic phonics approach. The scheme includes Firm Foundations, The Basics, The Higher Level -Choose to use and Switch It spelling sounds, as well as KS1 spelling rules. Our scheme ensures children develop a passion for reading and the confidence to independently apply each skill when reading and writing. They will be highly motivated to ‘read with Rex’ and ‘write with all their might!’

Intent

At Cedar Park School, we help develop the children’s knowledge of sounds through a fun, magical and inspiring phonics lessons. They will progress to the next stage of phonics when they are secure within the current stage.

We intend to use and tailor Supersonic Phonics Friends to support the children learning through a fully systematic, synthetic phonic approach ranging from the simple to the complex spellings of the alphabetic code. Supported by their Supersonic Phonic friends, this approach will ensure children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing. Supersonic Phonic Friends can be powered through technology and also brought to life through joyful play and actions in both the indoor and outdoor environment. This approach allows phonics to be consistent throughout the phonics phases from EYFS to Year 2, active engagement of pupils and gives phonics a fun and joy aspect.

Implementation

Supersonic Phonics Friends is all about the three C’s. Phonics must be taught with commitment, it must be creative and it must be consistent across all years and children that are being taught. At Cedar Park we all follow the three C’s when we are teaching our phonics lessons with interactive and fun lessons following magical woodland characters along the way.

Each lesson has actions and phrases which help the children to remember, read and write the sounds in each phase. At Cedar Park the phonics is delivered by the class teachers daily and interventions delivered by support staff, who have all been trained with using the scheme.

We have used Supersonic Phonic Friends as the scheme at Cedar Park school to teach phonics and tailored it to suit the children we have in each class. Before or during the daily lessons there will be a recap of the sound taught the previous day.  One day of the week will be a recap of the weeks learning, which allows class teachers and support staff to assess knowledge. Sound mats are available for the children within all lessons to support their spellings and can be used by the class teacher to get children to find a certain sound to show that they can recognise the sound. 

Adults also read with children at least twice a week which allows the children to apply their knowledge of sounds to words within different texts. 

Impact

Each class teacher will assess the children on their ability to read sounds that have been taught so far in that year group and fill out an assessment grid at the end of every half term. From this the class teacher will be able to see any gaps and support those children with interventions to help keep up with the class learning.

Phonics leader will know who the lowest 10% are within each class and support class teacher if needed with helping them to support the children.

In Year 1, the class teacher will also assess the children through practise phonics screening checks throughout the year and give those children extra support through catch up interventions or short daily keep up interventions.

What Does Phonics at Cedar Park Look Like?

Phonics is taught throughout EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2 on a daily basis. These lessons all follow the same structure of our Supersonic Phonics scheme. Each lesson follows:

• Listening Len: The focus sound will be introduced and children will listen to the sound.
• See it Sam: Children will see the grapheme (spelling) of the sound.
• Segmenting Seb: Children will segment words into phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (spellings).  
• Blend it with Ben: Children will use the segmented sounds and blend them back into words.
• Build with Bill: Children will ‘build’ words using individual spellings.
• Read with Rex: Children will read words that contain the focus sound alongside Rex.
• Write with Ron: Children will write words containing the focus sound, dictated by the teacher.

     Some lessons may also contain additional sections, which are as follows:

• Tricky Tess: Children will be exposed to words that are ‘tricky’ meaning that they cannot be read using their phonics knowledge.
• Nonsense Nan: This is an opportunity for children to apply their learning to words that make ‘no sense’. These are not real words, they are nonsense words.
• Cheeky Sneaky Sid: This is where children are exposed to a ‘sneak peek’ of the learning to come within the next lesson.

At Cedar Park we teach phonics through firm foundation stage and then Basics groups 2 to 5. Each Basic group has a collection of sounds which are taught and applied throughout the lesson and then added to working walls to support children. Children will also have the use of sound mats in the middle of tables to support writing.

Throughout EYFS, children will be taught firm foundation aspects in Nursery and in Reception the will be taught Basics 2 and 3. Year 1 will be taught Basics 4, 5 and the spelling rules for their year group. In Year 2 they will be taught the spelling rules for their year.

Each class will also be holding interventions for those children that need gaps filling in their learning. This will be done at a separate time to the daily phonics.

Phonics for children with SEND

Within phonics all children are exposed to their year group’s daily phonics lessons. SEND children will be given additional support with interventions individually or in small groups at their current levels and to help fill the gaps that they are missing.

Children identified with SEND may have additional catch up lessons within other curriculum time in the day to either recap previously taught sounds or to pre-teach for then new sounds. Some children may need keep up sessions to reinforce the learning that has already been taught in the previous year or terms.

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