We believe that phonics provides the foundations for all children’s ability to be able to read. Phonics provides the building blocks for a child to identify and use sounds, blend them together into words, apply them to be able to read sentences and to be able to spell words. Phonics should be taught using a robust, daily, synthetic manner and with fidelity to a scheme, which is why we use the Read, Write Inc at St Johns. Read, Write Inc follows children through their phonic teaching before moving on to Read, Write Inc spelling upon completion of the phonics programme. We adopt a ‘keep up, not catch up’ philosophy to provide effective phonic teaching for all children whether they begin with us in the Foundation Stage or join us later on.
Phonics and Reading can be thought of as a jigsaw, working from the edges in. We start with the edge pieces, we join them to create a complete frame. This is the part where the sounds (the edge pieces) are taught. Children learn to blend (the edge pieces being completed), then apply phonic knowledge to become confident at reading words (the next few layers) before being able to comprehend, discuss and analyse the bigger picture (completing the jigsaw).
Please read our Phonic Policy for how Phonics looks in our school.
This can be followed with the Reading Policy which you will find in the Reading section.