At Leicester Islamic Academy, we pride ourselves in upholding our ‘Excellence Everyday’ school motto. This applies to all areas of our work and especially to the area of teaching and learning.

We know that our children deserve the best education and so therefore we focus on providing a stimulating environment that has a clear focus on the highest standards for Literacy and Numeracy.

We know that the primary school years provide the foundation for all of your child’s future education, hence we are committed to providing them with the best start in life.

To prepare our children to become confident British citizens, we endeavour to enhance their reading skills, through providing them with opportunities to read as frequently as possible.

To develop their pleasure for reading, we follow PM series and the Oxford reading scheme- the grading system helps to track children’s progress.

To be inclusive, we involve parents by asking them to listen to their child’s reading at home, this helps them to become successful readers.

Phonics in KS1

At LIA in KS1, we are determined that every child will and should learn to read and write. To achieve this, we teach systematic synthetic phonics to children in Early years, Year 1, Year 2 and KS2 as and when there is need. We believe that diligent, concentrated and systematic teaching of phonics is central to the success of all our pupils in order for them to achieve high reading standards in Key Stage 1, 2 and for life.

By encouraging the use of systematic synthetic phonics to teach early reading, and using the phonics screening check to ensure that all children are making good progress, we want to help all children to master the essential mechanics of decoding words early. Once they’ve done that, they can quickly move on to develop fluency, comprehension and a lifelong love of books.

Throughout the phonics phase, children develop comprehension skills needed to become successful readers. Children learn a range of strategies that help them to develop their skills of inference this includes use of dictionaries to clarify meanings and extend vocabulary, generating questions to investigate texts and summarizing texts read. Through all stages of phonics, children are given opportunities to listen to texts, read a range of books in order to develop their love of reading.

Phonics Assessments

LIA assess the children in KS1 using the Phonics Screening Check. This is in accordance with the National Curriculum implemented in June 2012. The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check help teachers to confirm whether individual pupils have grasped fundamental phonic decoding skills, and identify which children need extra help. The check also gives parents confidence that their child has learnt this crucial skill. It also provides a national benchmark for phonic decoding, so that at LIA we can judge performance against the national average, and set high, but appropriate, expectations for our pupils to achieve by the end of Year 1.

Why we assess Phonics

We assess phonics in order to support children’s individual and group needs in order to aid their progression. This informs our medium and short-term plans. The results of the assessments will also indicate if any form of intervention is needed. Teachers are required to make regular ongoing assessments of the children’s learning within the phonics phases of Letters and Sounds. These assessments are informal and will take place any time children are engaged in reading and writing activities.

Phase 1 (Nursery and Reception)

During this phase, we develop speaking and listening so children can begin to hear and recognise and talk about sounds including environmental sounds, body sounds, instrumental sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and oral blending. During this phase, children are given opportunities to:

Develops speaking and listening through an enriched environment and structured activities

Daily opportunities to listen to and enjoy stories and drama;

Phonic lessons that support the development of listening skills in order to prepare pupils to prepare to distinguish sounds.

Phase 2

In this phase, children learn 19 sounds of the alphabet and their most common sounds. They learn to blend sounds together to read words and segment sounds to spell words. They develop reading by reading simple captions and sentences.

Phase 3

In this phase, they learn the remaining 7 letters of the alphabet along with their most common sound. They begin to learn sounds that are represented by two letters or more. They develop skills through reading, spelling and writing words, sentences and questions.

Phase 4 (Key Stage 1)

This is a consolidation stage where we teach children to blend and segment longer words it also develops spelling development as they learn to spell words with adjacent consonants

Phase 5 (Throughout Year 1)

During this phase, children learn more complex sounds and also learn alternative ways to pronounce the sounds they already know.

Phase 6 (Throughout Year 2 and beyond)

We have highly qualified teachers and teaching assistants that ensure the needs of your child are met. Our teachers receive high-quality training throughout the year that ensures they have up to date knowledge and expertise to deliver inspiring lessons.

There is challenge and differentiation in all lessons and variety of teaching methods are used to enthuse young minds. The school has iPads that are used in lessons, a full suite of computers and we are constantly seeking to embrace the use of new technology to deliver the curriculum.

We follow the National Curriculum for England Wales across all key stages and follow nationally recognised standards tests in each key stage. The main subjects studied include; English, Maths, Science, History, Geography, Arabic, Computing and Religious Studies. In addition to this, children have cookery lessons, Science Workshops led by external providers and many opportunities to learn though experience from school visits.

We deliver lessons that develop children’s personal, social and emotional well-being because at LIA we understand that happy, well-rounded, and resilient children will be go to be successful adults in the future, InshaAllah.