Phonics
Sounds-Write Phonics
At Wicklewood Primary School, we teach phonics using a linguistic phonics programme called Sounds-Write. This programme is successful in teaching children to read and spell as it starts with what all children know from a very young age, speech sounds. Children then systematically learn how these sounds are coded in our writing.
Sounds-Write is divided into three units, Initial Code, Extended Code and Polysyllabic Words. Each phase systematically building on the skills and knowledge which has been taught in the previous unit. Throughout each unit children have time to practise and apply the skills needed to read and spell words.
Students are taught four key concepts:
1. Letters are symbols that represent sounds
2. Sounds can be spelt using 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters (dog, street, night, dough)
3. The same sound can be spelt in different ways (rain, break, stay, gate)
4. The same spelling can represent different sounds (head, seat, break)
Students are taught to master three key skills:
1. Segmenting – the ability to pull apart the individual sounds in words
2. Blending – the ability to push sounds together to build words
3. Phoneme manipulation – the ability to insert sounds into and delete sounds out of words. This skill is necessary to test out alternatives for spellings that represent more than one sound.
What do children learn in Reception?
Children in Reception begin with the Initial Code where they practise all three key skills whilst learning the one-to-one sound-spelling correspondences and securing their understanding of key concept 1. This builds up confidence and phonic knowledge enabling them to read and spell a wide range of words and sentences. At first, children learn to read and spell simple one-syllable words with a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) sound structure (for example, ‘sat’). By the end of Reception, they can read and write one-syllable words with up to five, or even six, sounds such as ‘twist’, ‘grand’ or ‘scraps’.
Children also develop their knowledge of key concept 2 as they learn to read and spell words containing some sounds spelled with two letters (the sound /sh/ in ‘fish’ or the sound /th/ in ‘thin’, for example) as well as the three-letter spelling < tch > for the sound /ch/ in ‘catch’. Key concept 3 is introduced towards the end of Reception as the students learn about a small number of sounds that can be spelled in more than one way (for example, the sound /k/ spelled as < k > in ‘kit’, < c > in ‘cat’ and < ck > ‘pick’).
You can help your child by modelling the correct way to say the sounds. You may want to watch this video to see how your child will be learning to say the sounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8ZMfYjdN-s
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