Phonics

Learning to read is one of the most important skills your child will develop when starting school.

Letters and Sounds

All children in Reception and Key Stage One have daily phonics lessons based on systematic phonics programme called 'Letters and Sounds'. Letters and sounds are government recommended materials that help to improve children's speaking and listening skills, their phonological awareness and oral blending. This teaches children to recognise different letters and their sounds as well as the formation of letters. Phonics is identifying sounds in spoken words, recognising the common spellings of each sound (phoneme), blending the sounds into words for reading and separating words into sounds for spelling.

Letters and Sounds consists of six learning phases, high frequency words, common words and tricky words. Phase 1 helps the children develop their speaking and listening skills, Phase 4 introduces letter blends such as 'pl, fr, shr', Phase 6 focuses on spelling patterns, but Phases 2,3 and 5 are dedicated to matching sounds to single letters, digraphs and trigraphs. 

Please watch our wonderful children modelling the correct pronunciation of the phonemes for

Phases 2, 3 and 5. 

Big Cat Decodable Texts

All lessons provide children with the opportunity to build on what they know and to extend their skills and knowledge. Big Cat Decodable Texts are read by the children within lessons, allowing children to instantly apply their learning.