Phonics and Early Reading
At St Andrew’s, our intent is to ensure every child becomes a confident and fluent reader with a lifelong love of books. We teach early reading using Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS), a Department for Education validated systematic synthetic phonics programme that supports children to develop secure reading skills from the very beginning and access learning across the curriculum.
Our teaching and implementation of phonics begins at the start of Reception and takes place every day. We follow the structured progression of Essential Letters and Sounds so that children develop their understanding of how sounds (phonemes) link to letters (graphemes), enabling them to read words by blending sounds together and spell words by segmenting sounds. We use pure sounds when teaching phonics to support accurate blending. Daily phonics teaching continues in Year 1 and beyond for any children who need further support.
Lessons follow a consistent and carefully sequenced structure so children know what to expect and can focus on learning. Teaching is interactive, with many opportunities to hear, say, read and write sounds and words. This consistent approach helps children understand what they need to do and how to achieve success, making it easier for them to learn and apply new grapheme–phoneme correspondences (the alphabetic code). Children begin by learning single letter sounds before moving on to digraphs, trigraphs and more complex spelling patterns as their knowledge grows.
Children read books that are fully decodable and carefully matched to the sounds they know so they can practise successfully and build fluency and confidence. They read every day during phonics and guided reading lessons, including reading with adults, with partners and together as a class.
ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Assessment is ongoing and informs teaching, ensuring that all children make good progress. Teachers regularly monitor children’s phonics knowledge and reading skills so that any gaps can be identified quickly. Support is provided promptly within lessons, and where further help is needed, short, targeted interventions are used. As a result, children develop secure phonics knowledge, become confident readers and are well prepared to read age-appropriate texts independently by the end of Key Stage 1.
Developing a Love of Reading
At St Andrew's. we believe that learning to read and developing a love of reading go hand in hand. We prioritise storytime throughout the school day so that children are regularly exposed to high-quality texts, rich vocabulary and engaging language. Listening to stories helps children build their understanding, imagination and enjoyment of books alongside learning the skills needed to read independently.
Children in Reception and Key Stage 1 learn a range of poems, songs and rhymes as part of our daily routines, including texts from our poetry basket. We provide regular opportunities for children to revisit and practise familiar texts to build confidence, develop expression and strengthen their speaking and listening skills. This supports early reading development, including decoding, prosody and comprehension.
How You Can Support Your Child at Home
You can support your child by listening to them read their decodable book regularly at home. These books are carefully matched to the sounds your child is learning in school, so they should be able to read them by sounding out and blending. Encourage your child to use their phonics to work out unfamiliar words and use pure sounds when supporting them. Re-reading the same book several times across the week helps to build confidence, fluency and expression. Sharing stories together and talking about books also supports vocabulary development and a love of reading.
Please see the videos below for guidance on how to pronounce sounds correctly and to understand the key terminology we use when teaching phonics. These will help you to support your child with reading at home.
Working with Parents and Carers
We value working in partnership with parents and carers to support children’s reading development. Each year, we hold phonics information sessions to share how we teach early reading and how you can support your child at home. We also offer termly ‘Show and Share’ opportunities where parents and carers can come into school to observe a phonics lesson and see how learning takes place in the classroom. In Year 1, we also hold a meeting for parents and carers to provide information about the Phonics Screening Check and explain how you can support your child.
Phonics Screening Check
At the end of Year 1, children complete the statutory Phonics Screening Check. This is a short assessment which checks children’s ability to decode words using their phonics knowledge. The check helps us to ensure that children are making good progress and to identify any additional support that may be needed. If children do not meet the expected standard in Year 1, they will continue to receive support and will retake the check in Year 2.