Phonics

At Elm C of E Primary school, we teach children to decode (read the words on the page) using the Sounds-Write Phonics programme. This is a linguistic phonics programme that teaches children 175 sound-spelling correspondences over YR to Y2 and beyond. Rather than moving on to spelling rules, which have many exceptions and contradictions, children learn and apply more sound-spelling correspondences (the extended code) in their reading and writing throughout their time at Elm.

The linguistic phonics approach looks at the relationship between the spoken language and the written word. Children will study three main skills to enable them to learn to read: blending, the skills of blending letters together; segmenting, separating sounds for spelling; and manipulating, swapping sounds to develop reading accuracy.

Throughout KS2, children study etymology (the origin of words) which enables them to discover the meaning of new words and apply their extensive code knowledge. Phonics lessons in KS2 replace spelling lessons.

How do I provide a rich reading experience for my child?

Parents and carers often ask us what books they should read to their children.

We recommend you read a wide variety of books to your children, from classic picture books to non-fiction texts on topics that interest them.

Reading a wide variety of books to your child will provide rich reading experiences that promote a love of reading. These can be books from the class book boxes, the school library or home. The majority of these books contain complicated alphabet code knowledge, much of which has not yet been explicitly taught in Reception or at the start of Year 1.

We encourage you to read these books with your child, rather than getting them to read them.

In doing so, you will;

• model what fluent reading ‘sounds’ like
• model appropriate expression and phrasing (e.g. slight pauses at commas and full pauses at full stops)

We also suggest that you:

• talk about the book and encourage your child to retell the main parts of the story to you
• talk about the characters, plots and settings of stories and link these to the illustrations provided
• discuss what was learnt from informational texts e.g. “What did you find out about spiders?”
• compare the people and events in the texts with those in your own lives
• select several words from the text (that your child would know) and ask them to put the word in a sentence - this is a powerful vocabulary building activity

We look forward to working in partnership with you!

Help your child to read and write

Our free course for parents and carers will help you get your child off to a good start!

The course will show you how to:

• help your child take their first steps in reading and spelling
• understand how to help your child build, write and read simple cvc (consonant, vowel, consonant) words
• understand how to correct your child when they make a mistake in their reading or writing simple words
• have a basic understanding of how phonics works