At St Bede's children in Reception follow the synthetic phonics approach, using the Letters and Sounds programme. It is an approach to teaching phonics in which sounds, (phonemes) made by individual letters or a combination of letters (graphemes), are blended and segmented to form words.

Our daily phonics sessions are fun, involving lots of speaking, listening and games. The emphasis is on children’s active participation and interactive teaching. They learn to use their phonic knowledge for reading and writing activities and in their independent play.

About the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme.

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/

‘Letters and Sounds’ is divided into six phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. In Reception we focus on phases 1-4.

Phases are the way the letters and sounds are broken down to teach sounds in a certain order. At the same time whole words that cannot be broken down easily, (we call “tricky words”) are taught to the children. Children have time to practise, revise, recall and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. 

Below is a rough guide as to what phase we will be focusing on and when. Please click on the links for more information.

Autumn 1 - Phase 1 http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-1.html

Autumn 2 - Phase 2 http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2.html

Spring 1-  Recap phase 2 start phase 3 

Spring 2 - Phase 3 http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-3.html

Summer 1 Phase 3/ Phase 4

Summer 2 - Phase 4 http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-4.html

Website recommendations

Pronunciation of sounds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksblMiliA8

Phonics play -  https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

Teach your monster to read - https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/