Phonics
At The Lea, we recognise the fundamental importance of reading for a child’s academic achievement, access to the curriculum, wellbeing and success later in life. We prioritise reading, the importance of language and vocabulary and the love of stories and books in our school. It is our mission to ensure that every child at The Lea becomes a fluent and successful reader.
Teaching children to read requires two different approaches;
- language comprehension and composition
- decoding and encoding
Language comprehension is taught through the high quality texts, stories and poetry that we provide, combined with our language rich curriculum that promotes reading for pleasure.
Decoding and encoding is taught through our systematic synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme – Little Wandle Revised.
Little Wandle Letters and sounds follows a clear progression from Reception to Year 1 which enables the children to build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell fluently and accurately.
What is phonics?
Making connections between the sounds of our spoken words (phonemes) and the letters that are used to write them down (graphemes).
Phonics in Nursery
Children focus on language development through quality stories and rhymes in addition to oral blending. This is supported by the ‘Foundations for Phonics guidance’ in Little Wandle progression. Phonics is taught daily.
Phonics in Reception & Year 1
Children follow the progression within the Little Wandle Letters and sounds Revised Programme. Phonics is taught daily with a review session on a Friday.
Pronunciation of sounds
It is essential that children are taught and modelled the correct pronunciation of phonemes in order for them to blend words for reading and segment them for spelling. See below:
- Reception Autumn 1 – Pronunciation Guide
- Reception Autumn 2 – Pronunciation Guide
- Reception Spring 1 – Sounds