What is Phonics?

Phonics is the study of sounds. Children are taught to read and write using phonics, linking the phonemes (sounds in words) and graphemes (the symbols used to represent them).

What Phonics programme is used in school?

For the teaching of phonics, we use the DfE accredited Essential Letters and Sounds programme. Children are actively taught and supported to use phonics as the prime approach to decoding, avoiding the use of other strategies. Children should not need to resort to guessing or using the pictures or grammatical context.

For more information on ELS, click here

The Government strongly recommend the use of synthetic phonics when teaching early literacy skills to children. Synthetic phonics is simply the ability to convert a letter or letter group into sounds that are then blended together into a word.

Reading opens the door to learning. A child who reads a lot will become a good reader. A good reader will be able to read more challenging material. A child who can read more challenging material is a child who will learn. The more a child learns, the more he or she will want to find out.

The children are assessed every half term and are grouped according to their ability. They will work with an ELS trained teacher or teaching assistant.

Our ELS ‘Reading Leader’ is Miss Walker.