Phonics and Early Reading
How we teach Phonics
Phonics is a way of teaching children to read and write by segmenting and blending individual sounds. Every letter and different combinations of letters make particular sounds. We follow the Letters and Sounds Programme of teaching, which is split into 6 phases that systematically build on skills and knowledge of previous learning. We use the Letter Join Programme to help develop letter formation. In Reception we use non cursive handwriting to begin with and leading up to Summer term we begin to teach the children how to lead out to prepare them for Year 1. From Year 1 children use lead in and lead out. EYFS and KS1 letter formation examples can be found at the bottom of the page.
Children in Reception and Year 1 take part in daily phonics sessions and from Year 2 upwards children access Pathways to Spell. Any child in Year 2 upwards who would benefit from additional Phonics teaching will receve this support. Phonics sessions are roughly 20 minute sessions which focus on key reading skills such as decoding, segmenting and blending to read words and segmenting the sounds in words to spell. During Phonics lessons we also teach children to read and write ‘tricky words’ which are also known as ‘sight words.’ These are words that you cannot sound out using phonics.
Key vocabularly adults and children use in Phonics, Reading and Writing
Phoneme – smallest unit of sound/single letters (eg - s, a, t, p, i, n)
Digraph – two letters make one sound (eg - sh, ch, th, ng)
Trigraph – three letters make one sound (eg - igh, ear, air, ure).
Split digraph – two letters make one sound but the letters have been split apart by another letter (eg - a - e sound in tape)
Grapheme – a written letter or group of letters that represent a sound eg how you form/write the letter/s
Consonants – b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z
Segment – to break down the word into its individual sounds to spell (eg - cat can be split into the sounds c-a-t.)
Blend – to put the sounds together to make a word (eg - the sounds s-a-t are blended to the word ‘sat')
Sound buttons – We use a dot under letters where one letter makes one sound and a line understand digraphs or trigraphs.
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Our Classroom Enivornments
Each class has a designated reading area which we believe should be a mini library for the children to browse and enjoy high quality texts that the children should be able to access easily and enjoy in a relaxing space.
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Take a look at some of the reading resources and opportunties we provide for the children
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| Story baskets | Children vote for their favourite story | Recommended texts | Pie Corbett's reading spine books |
All children in Reception and Year 1 have received a Phonics folder containing sound mats, tricky words and phonemes taught so far. Each week the children bring their folder in and new phonemes and tricky words are added to match what is being taught in school.
It was great to be able to deliver a Year 1 Phonics meeting to share how Phonics is taught and to share information about the Year 1 Screening Check.
The parents in Reception were invited in to take part in a Phonics lesson with their child/ren to see how Phonics is taught and how to support at home with reading and writing.
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