Phonics

Children are taught a range of strategies in order to help them read, including phonics (the sounds letters make). We use the Read, Write, Inc scheme to teach phonics in a way that reading, writing, handwriting and spelling are integrally linked, modelled and practised every day. These descrete phonic lessons are taught daily in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. Children are regularly assessed and then streamed into relevant phases depending on their ability.   They learn the shape, name and phoneme for each letter and group of letters in a sequential way.  They have daily practice at reading those letter sounds and blending them to read words including the sounds that they have learnt.  The children get success and enjoyment from reading books linked to the sounds that they have been learning that week and these books are part of the home reading diet for the children as well as other books at their own reading standard and a book of the child's own choosing. 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.