Phonics
"For many children, practising the ability to recognise sounds in words can make a big difference in how fast they learn to read."
At Bickershaw Church of England Primary School, we understand the importance of Early Reading and are passionate about giving children time to develop and apply their phonic knowledge. Little Wandle - Letters and Sounds Revised is our school's chosen Systematic Synthethic Phonics (SSP) programme.
Below are some resources to help you to understand where your child is up to on their phonics journey.
For further information about Little Wandle and additional resources to help you to support your child at home, please visit: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Below are the grapheme information sheets for the sounds that your child will learn in the first half of Reception.
Each sound (phoneme) has a spelling (grapheme) and to help your child to remember the grapheme each one has a mnemonic picture and phrase.
Once your child knows the GPCs, they can start to use their knowledge to help them to spell simple words.
Here is the sound mat that your child will use in Reception to help them to remember their graphemes, when they are spelling:
Once the children in Reception have learnt the grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), which are in the above documents, they then progress to reading words with more sounds in them, during Phase 4. Following this, they start to learn more graphemes (spellings) for each of the phonemes (sounds).
Below you can see the progression of how the children learn phonics within Reception and Year 1. Where children's knowledge does not match the intended progression, 'catch-up' interventions are in place to help the children to make progress.
Once the children have a secure knowledge of all the GPCs and they can blend to read words with them in, the children then start to apply their knowledge to spelling.
When the children are spelling words, they use a grapheme mat to help them to choose the correct spelling (grapheme) for the sound (phoneme) that they are writing down.
Here is the grapheme mat that your child will use from Year One.
The children will start learning Phase 2 phonics from the very start of Reception (Week 2). Children who have not yet achieved Phase One will access activities and interventions according to the aspect they are up to.
Activities that you can do at home:
Phase 1
| Name | |
|---|---|
| Alliteration Matching Cards.pdf | Download |
| Body Percussion Challenge Sheet.pdf | Download |
| Environmental Sounds Challenge Sheet.pdf | Download |
| Instrumental Sounds Challenge Sheet.pdf | Download |
| Oral Blending and Segmenting Challenge Sheet.pdf | Download |
| Rhyming Pairs Matching Cards.pdf | Download |
As children move into the latter stages of Key Stage One, they begin to learn more spelling rules from the National Curriculum Spelling Appendices, rather than 'phonics'. However, provision is made for those children who need further access to phonics to do so, as they will continue to have daily Little Wandle phonics lessons until their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence is secure and they can blend to read words, with all of the graphemes in them.
For further information about the teaching of Reading, please visit: https://www.bickershaw.wigan.sch.uk/virtual-office/school-curriculum-information/reading
For further information about the English Curriculum as a whole, please visit: https://www.bickershaw.wigan.sch.uk/virtual-office/school-curriculum-information/english
