English - Early Reading & Phonics
Chris Stephenson-Davis
Phonics & Early Reading Leader
"Johnny couldn't read until half a year ago for the simple reason that nobody ever showed him how."
Rudolf Flesch
The teaching of phonics is a key strategy that is used to help our children to read, write and spell. A combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with regular, daily opportunities for developing reading skills ensures every child becomes a successful, fluent reader and writer.
Vision for Phonics
Progression in Knowledge and Skills for Phonics at Floreat Montague Park
At Floreat Montague Park, children take part in daily phonics sessions in Early Years and Key Stage 1, which help them learn to read and write. As a school, we closely follow the Letters & Sounds progression, which is a sequence of teaching phases with the aim of children becoming fluent readers:
- Phase 1 (Nursery) - Supports children's developing speaking and listening skills and linking of letters and sounds. The focus is on listening to and repeating sounds.
- Phase 2 (Reception) - Introduces simple letter-sound correspondences. As each set of letters are introduced, children are encouraged to sound out and blend words.
- Phase 3 (Reception) - Builds on the letter-sound correspondences taught in Phase 2. Children learn consonant digraphs and vowel digraphs and trigraphs.
- Phase 4 (Reception and Year 1) - Consolidates learnt correspondences and children learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants (e.g. trap, milk, strong, crept).
- Phase 5 (Year 1) - Children learn some new graphemes for reading, learn alternative pronunciations for known graphemes and alternative spellings for known phonemes.
Key Parent Resources
