Phonics in the Deaf Provision
We believe that deaf children are able to learn to read and write fluently and that the teaching of phonics is crucial to this development and needs to start in the early years.
Floppy Phonics
In the Deaf Provision, we use ‘Floppy’s Phonics’. This takes the form of a Teacher-led interactive whiteboard lesson which is followed the next day by a worksheet lesson. The worksheet lesson reinforces the sound being taught, as well as words that contain that sound and the skills to segment and blend words. Children have opportunities to understand and see new vocabulary through these lessons, the skills to identify that sound within the word, and where the sound is made through visual phonics.
Our approach to teaching is auditory/oral. The children use spoken English to communicate and make maximum use of their hearing to access spoken language. All of our classes for deaf children are soundproofed to minimise background noise. Children wear radio aids while the class teachers wear microphones. Our mainstream classes and halls also have suspended ceiling panels to reduce background noise.
- The majority of our children have access to speech sounds across the frequency range. However, they need the support of lip reading and visual cues e.g. visual phonics were felt to be appropriate.
- Each deaf child from Reception up has an assessment of their ability to discriminate between phonemes and this continues after each phase has been taught in class.
- The children are taught in a quiet acoustic environment as well as taught in small groups to optimise their access to all of the speech and phonic sounds. This helps to ensure that children are able to learn new vocabulary and also have it explained to them.
- Phonics is continued past Year 2 and right up to Year 6 if required.
