Phonics

Children are taught a range of strategies in order to help them read, including phonics (the sounds letters make). We use the Letters and Sounds scheme to teach phonics. You can find out more about this scheme if you Google search ‘Letters and Sounds – The Department for Education.’ Discrete phonics lessons are taught daily in Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3. Children are assessed and then streamed into relevant phases depending on their ability. Phase 1: Phonics lessons take place daily (this phase is mostly taught in Reception class). Children explore sounds and develop their listening skills. Phase 2: Phonics lessons take place on 4 days of the week. The Letters and Sounds scheme is used to deliver a progressive programme of word reading skills. By the end of phase 2, many children should be able to read some VC (vowel- consonant) and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and to spell them. They start to learn to read and spell some high frequency ‘tricky’ words. Phase 3 and 4: Phonics lessons take place on 4 days of the week. Letters and Sounds is the scheme used to deliver a progressive programme of word reading skills. Children begin to read and write one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes. They blend and segment CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant), CCVC and CVCC words for reading and spelling and use their phonic knowledge when trying to read and write more complex words. Phase 5 and 6: Phonics lessons take place on 4 days of the week. Letters and Sounds is used to deliver a progressive programme of word reading skills. Children are taught to read words automatically if they are very familiar; decoding them quickly and silently because their sounding and blending routine is now established and to decode them out loud. Children are taught to read 100 of the most frequently occurring words in English.