Phonics and Reading

Phonics and Reading at Donisthorpe Primary School

Phonics- Sounds Write

At Donisthorpe, we use the Sounds-Write phonics programme to teach our children to read, spell and write. Sounds-Write is effective in teaching pupils to read, spell and write because it starts from what all children know from a very early age – the sounds of their own language. From there, it takes them in carefully sequenced, incremental steps and teaches them how each of the 44 or so sounds in the English language can be spelt.

Our approach teaches the conceptual understanding needed to become an effective reader:

that letters are spellings of sounds: visual language is a representation of spoken language
that a spelling can contain one, two, three, or four letters - examples are: s a t, f i sh, n igh t and w eigh t
that there is more than one way of spelling most sounds: the sound 'ae', spelt as in 'name', can be represented as in 'table', in 'rain', in 'eight', in 'play', and so on
that many spellings can represent more than one sound: can be the sound 'e' in 'head', 'a-e' in 'break', or 'ee' in 'seat'

Within this conceptual framework, we teach the factual knowledge required to become an effective reader and speller: the approximately 176 spellings that represent the 44 or so sounds in English, starting with the most simple one-to-one correspondences.

Reading and spelling also requires expertise in the skills necessary to make use of the alphabet code and pupils need to be able to:

segment, or separate sounds in words
blend, or push sounds together to form words
manipulate sounds: take sounds out and put sounds into words

Sounds-Write provides opportunities for practising these skills on an everyday basis until pupils achieve the automaticity required for fluent reading and spelling.

Presentation for parents- Phonics and Reading

Reading

In EYFS and Year 1 children read decodable reading books from Sounds-Write and Dandelion Readers. These books are fully decodable texts that build on the knowledge or ‘code’ that is being taught during Sounds-Write phonics lessons.

The books are carefully graded with a step-by-step introduction to new sounds and spellings and provide children with opportunities to practice and consolidate their reading skills of blending and segmenting throughout the text as well as the opportunity to practice reading fluency.

We also believe that children need exposure to high quality, rich texts to develop a love of reading and this is something that we want to promote at Donisthorpe. Children also have access to class libraries which are made up of collections of different books, for example:

Story books
Picture books
Favourite books
Traditional tales
Topic related books
Oxford Reading Tree
‘Book Banded’ books

These books have been carefully chosen so that children will enjoy sharing them and gain pleasure from reading them. They will also support the children’s development of personal book preferences meaning they are more likely to be motivated to read, read widely and develop lifelong reading habits.

We also teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and read good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words they know– their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.