In Nursery, phonics is taught through carefully planned play opportunities. Children are taught the skills of identifying environmental, instrumental and voice sounds alongside learning about rhythm, rhyme and alliteration through songs, stories and poetry. Children also become familiar with the alphabet and can begin to identify significant letters in their environment.

In Year 1 children continue to have daily phonics lesson which include sound reading, writing and application. Children also do handwriting and letter formation in these sessions. Phonics lessons lead into our English lessons so that the children can see the link between what they are learning and the skills they are applying. Children are taught as a whole class to ensure all children have maximum exposure to all the phases. They then split into small table groups to work on activities based on sounds they are less confident with.

At the end of Year 1, children take part in a national phonics screening. Children read forty real and pseudo words to their teacher. This tests the children’s ability to apply their phonic skills to decode words.

By Year 2 most children are able to learn spelling rules during phonics, although phonics games and flash cards are regularly used to reinforce what the children learnt in previous years. For those children who still need support, phonics interventions take place throughout the week.

As children move into Key Stage 2, spelling lessons replace phonics lessons. Here children learn to investigate spelling rules and also practice their handwriting. For those children who need further consolidation, we have regular short-burst catch up sessions with trained LSAs.