Phonics and Spelling
Phonics is taught using the systematic synthetic phonics provider, Twinkl Phonics in Early Years and Key Stage 1. Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing in which words are broken up into their smallest units of sound or ‘phonemes’. Children learn to associate a written letter or group of letters, known as ‘graphemes’, with each phoneme. Sounds are then joined or ‘blended’ together into words for reading or, conversely, whole words are broken down or ‘segmented’ into their sounds for writing. Teachers use a variety of strategies including games, paired work, whole class instruction, one to one and small group support and independent work to provide children with lots of opportunities to practise phonics skills throughout the day.
In Key Stage 2, all teachers use the ‘Sounds and Syllables’ scheme of work to deliver teaching spellings. This scheme builds on the phonics learnt in Key Stage 1 and encourages children to ‘Slow Spell’ words through breaking them first into syllables and then sounding out the sounds in each syllable. An emphasis is used on ‘spelling voices’ to ensure children are enunciating each sound carefully to avoid misspelling due to pronunciation. The scheme also has a grounding in morphology of words and how affixes affect the meaning of each word. For example – the suffix ‘y’ means ‘full of’ therefore the word sunny means full of sun.