The children at St Mary's are taught Phonics using the validated scheme Supersonic Phonic Friends.
Phonics at St Mary's
- Daily, fun phonics sessions to learn the 44 sounds or ‘phonemes’ which make up the English language.
- Children need to recognise the sound/phoneme and know the letter name (26 letters) e.g. my name is M, my sound is ‘m’
- Pairs of letters for some sounds – digraphs e.g. ck
- Learning the corresponding graphemes e.g. S (writing the letters)
- Mark making and letter formation – writing!
- Learning to sound out – to segment or chop the letter sounds – spelling in other words e.g. log = l – o – g
- Learning to blend the letter sounds in a word to read it.
- Children are taught to recognise high frequency words e.g. the, I, up, it, me, at. Some of these are tricky or camera words i.e. non-decodable e.g. me, you, the. Others are decodable e.g. i-t a-t o-n. Please see the Reception class page for more information.
Reading in Reception and KS1
- Each child will receive a carefully chosen reading book each week.
- Partnership with school - please read with your child at home. Please add a brief comment in the Reading Record to indicate that you have read with them. This will help us to know how your child is applying the reading skills they are learning at school.
- Your child will be read to by an adult at least once a week and more often if they require more support.
- Teacher comments will be a brief note on your child’s reading progress.
- Children are encouraged to read a variety of books - comics, fiction/non-fiction, library books, magazines etc.
- Use phonics games - CBeebies, Phonics Play, iPad apps & Busythings.
