Phonics
From Reception onwards children are taught Phonics using the ‘Sounds Write’ Phonic Programme. Its purpose is to provide classroom professionals with a comprehensive system with which to teach reading, spelling and writing.
Why Sounds Write?
Sounds-Write is an expertly structured synthetic phonics programme based on the science of reading. This multisensory, code-oriented, comprehensive approach to literacy instruction has been designed by teachers—for teachers. There are many phonics schemes and resources to choose from, but Sounds-Write focuses first and foremost on developing teacher knowledge. Drawing on well-established theories of learning and teaching, Sounds-Write empowers educators with the knowledge and confidence to forge a brighter future for their students. Therefore, we ensure that teachers at our school have received comprehensive Sounds Write training to deliver successful phonics teaching.
Please see the linked research which supports our decision to implement this scheme.
A longitudinal study of literacy development using Sounds-Write
English Spellings - A Lexicon by Dave Philpot, John Walker & Susan Case
The Sounds Write Programme
The programme focuses on 3 key skills:
-Segmenting – (splitting a word up into its sounds)
-Blending – (recognising the sounds in a word and putting them together)
-Phoneme manipulation – (ability to change or move individual sounds in a word to make a new word)
And 4 key concepts:
-Letters are used to spell individual sounds. (Symbols for the sounds we make). What sound do you say for this?
-Each sound may be written in more than one way. (c k ck- same sound written differently)
-Many sounds may be written in more than one way.
-Many spellings represent more than one sound. (ow – cow ow – snow)
Progression
The programme starts in Reception with the Initial Code.
This teaches all of the letters of the alphabet and simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words only are introduced. As the programme progresses, the complexity of one-syllable words is increased to four-, five- and six-sound words of the structure CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC/CCCVCC, before introducing the most common consonant digraphs such as ch sh, ng, th, wh.
Words that cannot be sounded out, such as ‘I’ and ‘was’, are also taught throughout.
Thereafter, from Year 1 onwards, all the remaining common vowel and consonant sound to spelling correspondences are taught until all the common spellings for the forty-four sounds in English have been covered. In parallel with this, pupils are taught how to read and spell polysyllabic words, progressing from two-syllable to five- and six-syllable words.
Phonics Progression Document
Please see the progression of sounds taught in the downloadable document below.
