Phonics Observation Form – Completed Example
Trainee teacher:
School/Setting:
Context: Discrete / Contextualised / Shared Reading
Date:
Observer
Year Group / No. of Pupils
Subject knowledge and skills
e.g. Phoneme grapheme correspondence; hearing, identifying, segmenting and blending sounds; sight vocabulary; use of
correct terminology; structure of phonics session ( revisit and review, teach, practise and apply); learning objective
appropriate to age phase/ school’s phonics framework.
Where appropriate in the text, you demonstrated segmenting and blending cvc and ccvc words using the big book e.g. shock,
stuck. Your own phonic knowledge was secure, phoneme pronunciation modelled correctly. You balanced this well,
maintaining the flow of the book and keeping children interested. Do make sure that, when you stop, you give the children
enough time to segment and blend (reinforce it as a whole class).
Use of motivating and appropriate resources and teaching strategies
e.g. Suitability of texts; modelling of reading skills; application of phonic knowledge and skills (in real contexts e.g reading &
writing); interactive opportunities; the print environment.
You chose an engaging big book for the session, linking into our work on animals.
It was good that children were encouraged to pick out key words and were reminded to use the word wall to help them.
Making the large speech bubbles before- hand also helped the children to pick out and read key parts of the text. You made
good use of talk partners to discuss the characters in the story.
Role of talk/opportunities for language comprehension
e.g. Use of speaking and listening opportunities; vocabulary enrichment and reading comprehension; speaking and listening
central to the teaching phase
You made really good use of speaking and listening in the group work following on from the story. It was really effective to
continue with reading speech bubbles for the different characters in small groups as the children were able to support each
other with decoding and rehearse expression and fluency. This was supported by the vocabulary list that the TA made as you
read the story. Clarifying these words helped all the children. It would also have been useful to develop this group reading
with some discussion around text comprehension, perhaps later in the week?
Assessment
e.g. targeted intervention for individuals, constructive use of pupils’ misconceptions through the assessment of oral and
written work.
You made very good use of targeted questioning in the whole class work, allowing opportunities for individuals to segment
and blend a range of words and asking individuals to identify phonemes.. You worked very well to support red group with
decoding simple cvc words and ensured that P.L was gaining from this work by helping him to pick out relevant
grapheme/phoneme correspondence. How could you use this to inform your assessment for learning?
Strengths
Good range of targeted questioning.
Good choice of text supported well by additional visual
strategies and paired/ group work.
Accurate modelling of phonemes.
Targets
Allow more time for segmenting and blending.
Reinforce comprehension work through group discussion
about the story with focussed questions.
Plan AFL opportunities for application of phonic skills.
Demonstrate reading direction with finger pointing.
Phonics Observation Form
Trainee teacher:
School/Setting:
Context: Discrete / Contextualised / Shared Reading
Date:
Observer
Year Group / No. of Pupils
( underline & give details)
Subject knowledge and skills
e.g. Phoneme grapheme correspondence; hearing, identifying, segmenting and blending sounds; sight vocabulary; use of
correct terminology; structure of phonics session ( revisit and review, teach, practise and apply); learning objective
appropriate to age phase /school’s phonics framework.
Use of motivating and appropriate resources and teaching strategies
e.g. Suitability of texts; modelling of reading skills; application of phonic knowledge and skills (in real contexts e.g reading &
writing); interactive opportunities; the print environment.
Role of talk/ opportunities for language comprehension
e.g. Use of speaking and listening opportunities; vocabulary enrichment and reading comprehension; speaking and listening
central to the teaching phase.
Assessment
e.g. targeted intervention for individuals; constructive use of pupils’ misconceptions through the assessment of oral and
written work.
Strengths
Ways forward