Phonics

Phonics at Tunbury Primary School

At Tunbury Primary School, we are aware that in order to give your child the best start, it is important for home and school to work together. To support your child in becoming an effective and confident reader, we hope to work closely with you to develop their knowledge of phonics (letter sounds) to enable them to decode different words they come across.

Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen phonics programme. It teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words. At Tunbury we follow the phonics scheme Essential Letters and Sounds. Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. 

You can find more information on our scheme and how to support at home on the Essential Letters and Sounds Website, following the link below. There are added videos on the page for support with pure pronunciation of sounds.

https://essentiallettersandsounds.org/parents/

Every child in Reception, Year 1 and the beginning of Year 2 receives a daily phonics lesson, comprising of 5 elements: Revisit, teach, practice, apply and review. We use a simple, consistent approach to teaching phonics. Your child will experience the same classroom routines within each lesson which reduces cognitive load and maximises the chances of success. All children are supported within the lessons to use their new phonic knowledge independently. In every single lesson, your child will make the direct application to reading. 

Your child will bring home a reading book that is completely decodable at their current phonics level. This means that your child should be comfortable and able to read the whole book independently with little support. Rather than the book they bring home being a challenge, it should be a fluent read that increases their confidence. Your child will have the opportunity to bring a book home every week, for them to read to you at least 5 times.

We do not use a scheme for reading at Tunbury, we have a range of texts that are grouped by phonics sounds in KS1 and colour bands in KS2. Our aim is to offer a variety of genres and books for children to enjoy and read across their day. These books are used to support children to improve their fluency and confidence with reading.

They are also free to read widely at home either by themselves or with the support of an adult from a wider range of sources. This could include comics, picture books, information books or even enjoying a bedtime story read to them. Please remember to record any time your child reads to you in their reading record.