Phonics

Phonics in the Early Years and KS1

In Nursery we teach the following aspects of phonics: discriminating between sounds; rhythm and rhyme; the identifying the initial sounds of words; and, at the end of Nursery, how to orally blend and segment familiar words.

Experience shows that children benefit hugely by exposure to books from an early age with music also playing a key part in developing children’s language. 

In Reception and KS1 your children will be taught to read and write quickly and skillfully using daily systematic, synthetic phonics.  They will be taught three crucial things:

1. That sounds (phonemes) are represented by specific letters (graphemes).  For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents the sound mmm.
2. How sounds can be blended together to allow them to read words.  For example, that the letters ‘c-a-t’ can be blend together to make the word ‘cat’.
3. How they can spell words by segmenting the sounds in words they hear.  For example, that the word ‘dog’ can be segmented into the letters ‘d-o-g’.

To teach phonics, Tufnell Park uses the Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised scheme . This is taught from Nursery, through Reception and into Year 1. If you would like a more detailed understanding of the principles and practices of Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revised please do come along to our next Phonics Parent Workshop at 8.40am on 10th November 2022.

Please also find more information from Little Wandle on the link below:

Here you can find wonderful videos explaining how we teach the pronunciation of different sounds.

In addition, below are further online platforms for each phase to support your child whatever stage they are at.

https://central.espresso.co.uk/espresso/primary_uk/home/index.

https://www.busythings.co.uk/lgfl-login/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/

We have experienced staff, who are skilled at ensuring that all children can access the phonics, using discrete teaching, a multi-sensory approach, and smaller focused groups.

To support your child further, we use a reading scheme Collins Big Cat Books.  These are carefully designed to support children’s progress and are intended to be fully decodable in line with Little Wandle. Your support at home, ideally reading at least 3 times a week, will hugely help develop their reading skills and enhance their learning.