At St White's, we use Essential Letters and Sounds as a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach our youngest children to read. Children begin learning phonics as soon as they start in reception as we recognise that reading and the ability to communicate clearly is a key to their future success. Daily teaching of phonics takes place in reception, year 1 and year 2. Teachers use a range of different strategies to support all children in having a 'can do' attitude towards learning to read and spell.
As part of our phonics lessons, children are taught correct letter formation and have opportunities to practise it daily. Additionally, phonics lessons include the teaching of harder to read and spelling words: words in which the English spelling code works in a way that has not been taught yet.
While children are learning, they are given books that are decodable for their current stage and are encouraged to read them several times to build up fluency.
If you would like to support your child further with phonics at home, resources are available here. These are optional but will complement the scheme we are using in school.
These videos will support you with knowing how we pronounce the phonemes.