Our teaching of reading is initially based on pupils learning sounds, (phonics). There is more to reading than this but there is a weight of evidence that systematic synthetic phonics, taught in the first years of a child’s education, gives children the key building blocks they need to decode and understand words. This underpins children’s successful progress in reading and can inspire a lifetime love of books.
The phonics approach teaches children to decode words using sounds, rather than by recognising whole words. The emphasis in early years teaching is on synthetic phonics, in which words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children are taught the letter or group of letters (graphemes) that represent these phonemes and also learn to blend them into words. So, at its most basic, children are taught to say the sounds in a word like c-a-t, and then blend them together to read the word cat.
It must always be remembered that phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words – decodable and tricky – is the ultimate goal.
At Waycroft we use the Primary National Strategy document ‘Letters and Sounds’ to plan our phonics sessions; it begins in the Nursery and progresses as shown in the table below.
Nursery
|
Phase 1 - In Nursery children focus on hearing and differentiating between different types of sounds including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds,voice sounds andrecognising rhythm, rhyme and alliteration. Finally children learn oral blending (teacher says the phonemes e.g. c-a-t and children try to blend the sounds to make the word) and oral segmenting (teacher says a word e.g. dog and children try to break it up into its phonemes e.g. d-o-g) of letters. |
Reception |
Phase 2 - Initially children learn 19 sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) for each of these. They learn to blend sounds together to read words and segment words into their separate sounds to write them. This begins with VC (vowel-consonant) and CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant). They will use these skills to read simple words and captions. Phase 3 – Children learn a further 25 sounds, most of which are represented by graphemes containing more than one letter e.g. ee, oo, igh, oa, ai etc. By the end of phase 3 the children will be able to represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme;at this stage pupils will be able to read simple sentences. Phase 4 -Children spend time learning to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump etc. Pupils who are ready will be encouraged to read more complex words and sentences. |
Y1 |
Phase 5 - Children continue to use phonics to build a broader reading vocabulary. Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, for example, they already know ai as in rain, but now they will be introduced to ay as in day and a-e as in make. Alternative pronunciations for graphemes will also be introduced, e.g. ea in tea, head and break. They are also taught ‘tricky words’ which can’t easily be worked out by using phonics for example oh, their, people, looked and could. Again children continue to apply their reading through using books which get more difficult as they learn more words. Children will also increase the number of words which they can read at sight (without sounding out). |
Y2 and beyond |
Phase 6 - Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.At this stage children should be able to spell words phonetically although not always correctly. The main aim now is for children to become more fluent readers and more accurate spellers as children will have already learnt the most frequently occurring grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in the English language. They will be able to read many familiar words automatically. When they come across unfamiliar words they will in many cases be able to decode them quickly and quietly using their well-developed sounding and blending skills. With more complex unfamiliar words they will often be able to decode them by sounding them out. As children read more words at sight (without sounding out) they will become increasingly fluent readers. |
During Letters and sounds session’s children are also taught to read and spell high frequency words (common words that appear most frequently in speech and written texts).
Glossary
VC: A vowel-consonant word, such asat, it or as.
CVC: A consonant-vowel-consonant word, such as cat, pin or top. You may also come across the abbreviation CCVC for consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant words such as clap and from. Also CVCC for words such as mask and belt.
Phoneme: Phonemes are the smallest unit of speech-sounds which make up a word. For example, there are three phonemes in the word sit /s/-/i/-/t/. If you change the phoneme /s/ for /f/, you have a new word, fit. If you change the phoneme /t/ in fit for a /sh/, you have a new word, fish - /f/-/i/-/sh/.
Grapheme: Graphemes are the written representation of sounds.
Privacy and cookies policy Policies and Accessibility Statement © Waycroft Academy. All rights reserved. 2023
Powered by
Cookies are small data files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Cookies are widely used by online service providers in order to (for example) make their websites or services work, or to work more efficiently, as well as to provide reporting information.
Cookies set by the website owner or service provider (in this case, eSchools) are called “first party cookies”. Cookies set by parties other than the website owner are called “third party cookies”. Third party cookies enable third party features or functionality to be provided on or through the website or service you are using (such as advertising, interactive content and analytics). The third parties that set these third party cookies can recognise your computer both when it visits the website or service in question and also when it visits certain other websites or services.
We use first party and third party cookies for several reasons. Some cookies are required for technical reasons in order for our Services to operate, and we refer to these as “essential” cookies. Other cookies enable us and the third parties we work with to track and target the interests of visitors to our Services, and we refer to these as “advertising” or “analytical” cookies. For example, the embedding of YouTube and Vimeo videos, as added by individual schools, will require “advertising” cookies to be enabled in order to successfully play them. Schools that, for example, opt to track visitor data using Google Analytics will require “analytical” cookies to be enabled in order to do so. These third party cookies are used to tailor content and information that we may send or display to you and otherwise personalise your experience while interacting with our Services and to otherwise improve the functionality of the Services we provide. We also enable schools to employ cookies and similar tracking technologies in connection with their use of our Services in order to allow them to track visitors to and interactions with their school website.
eSchools websites may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us and to enrich your user experience. The cookies differ depending on the information. You can adapt your cookie preferences, although please note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer. We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for the purpose of their or any other third party's direct marketing.
Our Services allows schools to embed code which may potentially contain cookies. Please note embedded content, if displayed on one of our websites, has been added by the school and not by eSchools. The embedded content added by the school may require additional cookies or tracking technologies to be enabled in order to function.
You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. Be aware that cookie preferences are set on a per device basis; therefore you may need to set your preferences on each device you use.
Initial cookie pop-up banner: You can exercise preferences about what cookies are served on our Websites by selecting your preference from this modal which appears upon visiting an eSchools website/login screen and dashboard. You can also change your cookie preferences by clicking on the link on the footer of any page. The banner will reappear annually (August 31st to coincide with the academic year) to confirm your settings.
Browser Controls: You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies. If you choose to reject cookies, you may still use our Websites though your access to some functionality and areas of our Websites may be restricted. As the means by which you can refuse cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser-to-browser, you should visit your browser’s help menu for more information.
Disabling Most Interest Based Advertising: Most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of Interest Based Advertising. We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for the purpose of their or any other third party's direct marketing. If you would like to find out more information, please visit aboutads.info/choices or youronlinechoices.com.
Mobile Advertising: You can opt out of having your mobile advertising identifiers used for certain types of Interest Based Advertising, by accessing the settings on your Apple or Android mobile device and following the most recent published instructions. We will not, without your express consent, supply your personal information to any third party for the purpose of their or any other third party's direct marketing.
We may update this Cookie Statement from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Please therefore re-visit this Cookie Statement regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies. The date at the bottom of this Cookie Statement indicates when it was last updated.
If you have any questions about our use of cookies or other technologies, please email us at support@.eschools.co.uk.