Phonics

Children in Reception and Key Stage 1 follow the synthetic phonics approach, using the Revised ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme- Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds. It is an approach to teaching phonics in which individual letters or letter sounds are blended to form groups of letters or sounds, and those groups are then blended to form complete words.

We use the Little Wandle Reading Scheme which is Little Wandle Collins Big Cat phonics books. The reading books are matched to a child’s phonic level and are supplemented with books that the children can read easily for their enjoyment. The reading schemes give a variety of fiction and non–fiction books to develop children’s reading range. Once they finish the phonics reading scheme they will move onto Book Banded books.  When children are accomplished readers we encourage them to become ‘free readers’ and choose their own books from the school library.

Our daily phonics sessions in Reception and KS1 are fun, involving lots of speaking and listening activities. The emphasis is on children’s active participation. They learn to use their phonic knowledge for reading and writing activities and we then continue this into their independent play.

We use a synthetic phonics programme called Little Wandle Letters and Sounds, Revised. Please click the following link for more information.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/

This website has some useful video clips to explain what Phonics is. Under the for parents tab there are useful videos on how the children say the sounds..

Letters and Sounds is divided into phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. There are no big leaps in learning. Children have time to practise and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’ –words with spellings that are unusual. These include the words ‘to’, ‘was’, ‘said’ and ‘the’ –you can’t really break the sounds down for such words so it's better to just ‘recognise’ them.

Phase one will have begun in your child’s nursery setting. This phase paves the way for the systematic learning of phonics. We teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and read good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words they know –their vocabulary –and helps them talk confidently about books. The children learn to identify rhyme and alliteration.

The children will start on phase two when they begin in Reception and will continue through the phases through Reception and Year 1. 

Please see our Phonics and Early Reading Policy for more information.