At Werrington Primary school in Reception, Key Stage 1 and those that need it in KS2, early reading is taught using synthetic phonics as the main approach to reading. Pupils are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend the sounds all through the word for reading, and how to segment sounds to enable them to write words.

Children are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading, but are also taught how to read high frequency and common exception words which do not completely follow phonics rules.

We follow Supersonic Phonics Friends scheme to teach phonics.

Children have lots of time and opportunities to practise and expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’, which are the words that have unusual spelling patterns and do not follow the phonics patterns and rules.

 Reception:

The aim of phonics is to foster children’s speaking and listening skills as preparation for learning to read with phonics.

This is when systematic, high quality phonic work begins. During Reception the children learn the Basics 2 and 3 phases:

How to represent each of the forty-two sounds by a letter or a sequence of letters (digraph/ trigraph).

How to blend each of the sounds by a letter or sequence of letters.

Letter names.

How to read and spell some high frequency ‘tricky’  words (eg my you her)

Year 1:

Year 1 teach Basics 4 followed by Choose to Use and Switch it Mitch to ensure consolidation and making links.

Children learn new ways of representing the sounds and practise blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

Year 2:

 Year 2 are teaching the Supersonic Phonics Friends spelling rule to teach SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) expectations and spelling rules.

During this phase, children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.

Statutory phonics screening check

At the end of year one, your child will undergo a statutory phonics screening check. This is a statutory assessment which began in 2012.

All children in year one must take the check and any year two children who did not meet the expected standard in the previous year will take the check again.

The phonics screening check is designed to confirm whether or not individual children have learnt phonics decoding to the appropriate standard.

We provide parents with phonics packs to provide further details about the check.