Phonics

'At Wolston St Margaret’s, we believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves'

What is Phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children how 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 spelt 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”.

At Wolston St Margaret's we use a synthetic phonics approach, which is where phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word.

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised

At Wolston, we teach Phonics through a scheme called Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. This is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) developed for schools by schools.

The children begin their phonics journey in our Nursery class using the Little Wandle 'Foundations for Phonics': Foundations for Phonics at Wolston St Margaret's

Phonics is taught daily to children working at Phases 1–5, and reading practice sessions each week help build fluency in decoding.

Here is the link to the 'For Parents' section of the Little Wandle website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

The resources on this page will help you support your child with saying their phonemes (sounds) and writing their graphemes (letters). There are also useful videos so you can see how your child is taught at school, to be able to confidently support their reading at home.

Helpful Resources:

Glossary of Terms

Little Wandle Programme Overview – Reception and Year 1

Grapheme Mats – Phases 2, 3 and 5

Grapheme Mats – Phases 2 and 3

Pronunciation Guide – Reception Autumn 1

Pronunciation Guide – Reception Autumn 2

Pronunciation Guide – Reception Spring 1

Capital Letter Formation

The videos below demonstrate how to pronounce the sounds that the children learn during their phonics lessons and how key knowledge and skills, such as blending, Alien Words and tricky words are taught:

Phase 2 Sounds – Reception Autumn 1