At Mordiford Primary School we recognise that whilst fluent writers and readers employ a range of skills and strategies, the teaching of phonics provides children with a highly effective and systematic approach and as such is pivotal in promoting literacy development. Phonics teaching develops children’s phonological awareness—the ability to hear, identify and manipulate different sounds used in the English language. Children learn the correspondence between these sounds (phonemes) and the letter symbols (graphemes).
From the first steps in Nursery, where Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds is introduced, our children learn to discriminate between different environmental and musical sounds, before progressing to making sounds with their bodies and voices. These experiences are delivered through play, exploration, and exposure to a range of different media, as part of our continuous provision. This provision continues into Reception.
In Reception, we use the ‘Floppy’s Phonics’ scheme to deliver daily phonic lessons of up to 20 minutes with a visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approach to engage all learners at the appropriate level. Lessons are well paced, highly engaging, and require all children to be active participants in their learning. Phonic lessons follow the structure of:
The individual progress of every child is carefully monitored. This enables staff to swiftly identify children requiring personalised intervention, or additional challenges, to ensure rapid progress.
It is important that children are encouraged to pronounce the ‘pure’ sounds in a word. Here is a link to the helpful video to support you with using ‘pure’ sounds at home:
These websites may be used to support learning at home:
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ (free resources)