Phonics

We believe learning should be stimulating and enjoyable and that all children should be encouraged to be actively involved in their learning. Our mission is to enable all pupils to read effectively using the Read Write Inc Phonics Programme which is a systematic programme for the teaching of phonics, reading, spelling and writing.

Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds! More importantly, reading will give a child the tools to become independent life-long learners.

---

At Southgate Primary School, we use Read Write Inc to provide the foundations of learning to ensure the development of fluent reading. Through daily, systematic and consistent high quality phonics teaching, the children learn to segment words to support their spelling ability and blend sounds to read words. Read Write Inc allows the children to develop strong phonetic awareness and effective blending and decoding skills.

We begin in Reception by teaching set 1 sounds. Once the children have learnt the first 5 sounds ‘m, a, s, d, t’ they blend using the sounds they know. During lessons the children are taught to hear the sounds and blend them together to make a word. We begin with blending oral sounds, reading the letters and then blending them together to read a word. In Read Write Inc phonics, the individual sounds are called ‘speed sounds’ – because we want your child to read them effortlessly. Set 1 sounds are the initial letter sounds. They are taught in the following order.

m, a, s, d, t, i, n, p, g, o, c, k, u, b, f, e, l, h, sh, r, j, v, y, w, th, z, ch, qu, x, ng, nk

There are 12 Set 2 ‘speed sounds’ that are made up of two or three letters which represent just one sound, e.g. ay as in play, ee as in tree and igh as in high. When children learn their Set 2 sounds they will learn: the letters that represent a speed sound e.g. ay a simple picture prompt linked to the ‘speed sound’ and a short phrase to say e.g. May I play?

When learning their Set 3 speed sounds they will be taught that there are more ways in which the same sounds are written, e.g. ee - as in tree and ea - as in tea.

With each new sound the children will Fred Talk a list of green words linked to the sounds. They will have the opportunity to sound out and blend words containing the new sound. E.g. p-l-ay = play. The green words are decodable words the children can use ‘Fred Talk’ to help sound out and blend. The children will then use Fred (in their head) to sound out and blend the word in their head and then read the word out loud.

As children build up their knowledge of sounds they are able to apply their decoding skills to any unfamiliar word may it be real or nonsense. During lessons each day children will practice their decoding skills by sounding out the letters in 'Alien' words

Our EYFS and KS1 team at Southgate Primary School are experienced in the teaching of phonics. Training is provided to ensure that teachers have the knowledge and skills to deliver high quality systematic synthetic phonics across the school.