Phonics at Uxendon Manor Primary
Phonics is all about the ability to hear different sounds and being able to decode the rules and strategies for reading, writing and spelling. It focuses more on the method and follows a systematic structure of teaching and learning.
This page is to help you understand how we teach phonics at Uxendon Manor Primary School and the part that you can play in helping your child become a confident and fluent reader. Our aim is for all our children to become independent, life long readers, able to read a wide range of texts for a variety of purposes with understanding and for pleasure. We welcome and encourage support from home in the teaching of phonics and reading. We work in joint partnership between home and school to help children develop this vital skill.
In school, we follow the DFE Letters and Sounds programme and we learn the Jolly Phonics actions alongside each phoneme. Children in Reception, Year 1, and Year 2 take part in high-quality phonics sessions every day. These are fun sessions involving lots of speaking, listening and games, where the emphasis is on children’s active participation. They learn to use their phonic knowledge for reading and writing activities and in their independent learning during the day.
‘Letters and Sounds’ is split into 6 phases. These are expected to be taught during the following years:
Phase 1 – Nursery
Phase 2, 3, 4 – Reception
Phase 4, 5 – Year 1
Phase 5, 6 – Year 2
At each phase children are taught to recognise individual sounds, pairs and clusters of letters. In phonic sessions children are taught to recognise letters, understand the sound they make and then blend them together to create words. Some words, which cannot be phonetically sounded out, are taught at each phase. These are ‘tricky words’ and are taught through sight recognition.