English Lead: Mrs Teresa Bosley
English Link Governor: Mrs Kirsty Murby
Phonics
Phonics is the way we teach children to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.
Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.
Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.
Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch.
Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out. For example, when a child is taught the sounds for the letters t, p, a and s, they can start to build up the words: “tap”, “taps”, “pat”, “pats” and “sat”.
In Reception and Year One we use the All Aboard Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme.
The reading books children are given are decodable and only contain sounds they know. The children should be able to read their reading book fluently so that they also understand the text they are reading. Children should read each book several times, this will help them to develop their fluency and their comprehension of the text.
It is important that children learn to say the pure sounds. The videos below model the pure sounds and their pictophones.
The No Nonsense Spelling Programme provides a comprehensive progression in the teaching of spelling. Through it we teach the strategies, knowledge and skills pupils need to learn to help them spell.
In Year Two there are daily spelling lessons. In Years Three to Six lessons are taught two or three times a week. During the Autumn Term 2 2022 children will be taught daily spelling lessons to help them to catch up from lessons that should have been taught during Autumn1 2022.
The focus of the programme is on the teaching of spelling, which embraces knowledge of spelling conventions – patterns and rules; but integral to the teaching is the opportunity to promote the learning of spellings, including statutory words, common exceptions and personal spellings.