Content 

Early Reading

 

In Reception, we teach the Initial Code which includes a limited amount of code, so that students can focus on developing their skills. The skills students learn are segmenting (separating words into sounds), blending (putting sounds together to read words), and manipulation (swapping sounds in and out of words). Here are the spellings that are introduced 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 

 Units 8-10: 

no new spellings 

 Unit 11: sh, ch, wh, ng, ck, qu 

We begin by teaching consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words (e.g., ‘sat’, ‘dog’, ‘miss’), before introducing students to words with adjacent consonants (e.g., ‘went’, ‘frog’, ‘strap’). You can learn more about our approach by completing these free online courses:

https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write/  

https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write-part-2/   

In Year 1 and Year 2, we teach the Extended Code which introduces students to several different ways of spelling each of the 44. Through teaching Sounds-Write, we teach students that:

letters (spellings) represent sounds;

a sound may be spelled with 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters (sat, fish, where, eight);

one sound, different spellings (rain, play, great, cake)

one spelling, different sounds (head, break, dream)

Following advice from the Department for Education and Ofsted, we do not promote the use of silent letters, magic letters, or memorising whole words by sight. Instead, we teach students the relationships between sounds and their spellings. For example, we teach that the < a > in ‘what’ represents the sound /o/, as it does in ‘want’, ‘was’, and ‘squad’, too.

In addition to the Extended Code, we teach students to read and spell polysyllabic words (words with 2 or more syllables). This is essential as 80% of words in the English language are polysyllabic. In Key Stage 2, students apply their phonic knowledge to read new words and to spell words from the National Curriculum for spelling. Increasingly, teachers support students to develop their knowledge of etymology and morphology.

When we plan our phonics lesson, we include three elements. Firstly, we review learning from the previous unit. Secondly, we teach new learning and provide students with opportunities for controlled practice. Thirdly, we provide students with opportunities to retrieve learning with freer practice. This means the book and homework tasks your child completes will be from the previous units. This allows us to explicitly teach new skills and code during new learning, and students spend the next few weeks reviewing and retrieving learning with controlled then freer practice. 

*Sounds-Write Linguistic Phonics has been validated by the Department for Education. You can access downloads and links on their website: https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-84-downloads-links-for-parents-teachers.aspx. You can also access their free ebooks here:

Books for Reception (The Initial Code)

https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-109-initial-code-first-steps-collection.aspx  

Books for Year 1 (The Extended Code)

https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-111-extended-code-first-steps-collection.aspx