What is the Sounds Write approach to teaching phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skillfully.

Following the Sounds Write approach, children are taught the skills of blending (pushing sounds together to build words), segmenting (pull apart the individual sounds in words) and phoneme manipulation (inserting and deleting sounds in words). These skills, as well as core conceptual knowledge that letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds, 

Phonics in Nursery.

In order to prepare the children to begin their formal phonics teaching in Reception, the children in our Nursery are prepared for this through teaching and learning linked to their listening and attention skills. They will learn to orally segment and blend as well as recognise rhythm rhyme, such as during story sessions. 

Phonics in Reception.

When your child enters Reception, we will quickly begin introducing the sounds in different words.

This is the order that we will follow for the first term of your child’s education in Reception:

Unit 1: a, i, m, s, t

Unit 2: n, o, p

Unit 3: b, c, g, h

Unit 4: d, f, v, e

Unit 5: k, l, r, u

Unit 6: j, w, z

Unit 7: x, y, ff, ll, ss

When we begin a new unit of teaching, the children will also be embedding their knowledge of previously taught sounds and words. We will be ensuring that your child understands how letters are symbols for sounds, which need to be pronounced very precisely.

We will be teaching the children skills using different games, such as word building, sound swapping and symbol searching.

Our teaching of phonics will continue through the 'Initial Code' which will enable to children to learn how to segment and blend to read simple words and sentences.

Phonics from Year One onwards.

The children continue their phonics journey from Reception and will begin learning the 'Extended Code' which will explore how sounds can be spelled in more than one way. They will also explore that many spellings can represent more than one sound. 

Children will continue their phonics journey until their knowledge is secure and they are able to manipulate phonemes confidently to support their reading and writing.