Phonics & Spelling
What is phonics?
Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.
Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.
Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.
Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch.
Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out. For example, when a child is taught the sounds for the letters t, p, a and s, they can start to build up the words: “tap”, “taps”, “pat”, “pats” and “sat”.
Systematic Synthetic phonics
The most widely used approach associated with the teaching of reading in which phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word.
All Aboard Phonics
All Aboard Phonics is our systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) that is used to achieve the very best possible results for our children, year after year. It provides a complete programme to teach phonics in a fun, multi-sensory way with clear signposting of expected progress. All Aboard Phonics taps into children’s imaginations making learning fun and easy to remember.
Year 2 and Key Stage 2 Spelling
When children enter Year 2 they progress from All Aboard Phonics to using our spelling scheme, Spelling Shed. In our Spelling Shed lessons, students will continue to build on the firm foundations built whilst studying phonics in their early years of education.
They will continue to break down spellings into the smallest units of sound and cluster them into syllables in order to read and write words efficiently.
Through adult-led discussion and investigation children will become more secure in their knowledge of English orthography based on the frequency and position of the sounds within words. Children will study words; word parts; their meanings and how this affects spelling.
There are lessons throughout the scheme that consolidate children’s knowledge of common morphemes such as root formations, prefixes and suffixes.
Most lessons in the scheme include an etymology element that allows us to teach the children about the origin of the words that they are learning about.
Children will be able to see how the English language has, over time, borrowed and integrated words and spellings from a range of source languages. For example, the latinate verbs which follow Latin prepositions in English words such as: -act (do), -pute (think) or -opt (choose).