Phonics
What is Phonics?
Phonics is making connections between the sounds of our spoken words and the letters that are used to write them down.
Phonics teaching is an important part of English and provides the foundations of reading and writing. At Cherry Lane Primary School, we aim to teach children fluent word reading skills and provide a secure foundation in spelling from the earliest opportunity.
Phonics teaching involves showing children the sounds of letters – not the letter names – and how these sounds can be blended together to make words. For example, the word “pot” is a decodable word because the letter sounds can be blended together: p-o-t = pot
However, not all words are decodable and the children will be taught these as “Tricky Words” and have to be able to read them on sight. For example, the word “was” cannot be blended together as the “a” letter makes an “o” sound in the word.
Bug Club Phonics
At Cherry Lane we use Bug Club Phonics (a DfE validated scheme) to teach phonics. This is used daily from the beginning of Reception, enabling children to make a smooth transition from Reception to Year 1.
Daily lesson plans cover all the main Grapheme–Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) and Common Exception Words to provide children with the phonic knowledge and skills required for success in reading and writing.
Help for Parents
There are helpful sound mats, videos and actions list that the children are shown in every phonics lesson. These would be most useful to you to help support your child.