At Thaxted Primary School, we believe that learning to read is the gateway to enjoying a lifetime of discovery and enjoyment. Reading underpins all areas of the curriculum and therefore, we are committed to ensuring that all children learn to read well, quickly! One of the most important steps in this journey is phonics. Put simply, phonics means sounds, and is the relationship between letters and the sounds those letters make. At Thaxted Primary School we teach phonics through the Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) programme, which is a government validated systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme. Through this programme, children are provided with the strong foundations that they need to become confident and fluent readers.

ELS is a carefully structured approach that introduces letters in a systematic way. Phonics is taught from the beginning of reception and is taught every day all the way through into year 2. Each lesson builds on what children already know, helping them to blend sounds to read words and segmenting words to be able to spell. Children are taught to recognise the sounds (phonemes) in spoken words and link them to written letters (graphemes). They quickly begin to use these skills to read and write simple words, then captions and sentences and not long after, they will be reading and writing whole stories.

Every phonics lesson follows the same consistent routine, so the children know exactly what to expect, and they are able to focus on their learning without cognitive overload. Lessons are short, focussed and engaging, with plenty of opportunity for children to practice reading words, captions and sentences. During phonics lessons, we make sure that every child receives the support they need. Children who may find phonics more challenging are quickly identified and are given extra practice through targeted interventions, ensuring that no one is left behind.

Support at home is integral to your child’s reading success as regular practice helps to consolidate their learning.  Children take home fully decodable books that match their current level of phonic knowledge from the first week of phonics teaching and are asked to read each book at home 4 times to focus on: decoding, fluency, expression and enjoyment.

By the end of Key Stage 1, our aim is for all children to read well, fluently and to develop a real love of reading.  The ELS Programme makes this possible by giving children the tools they need to succeed.

When reading at home with your child, it is vital to their reading success that sounds are pronounced correctly, so please take some time to look at the videos linked below to hear how the sounds are spoken.

 

Phase 2 Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBFnAcXHOUQ

 

Phase 3 Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDInVjBUGC0

 

Phase 5 Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BwWD2ZlvBY