Phonics

In Year One phonics is taught discreetly through Letters and Sounds. The children have a daily phonics lesson where they will consolidate previous learnt phonemes. There are 44 phonemes in English each one representing a different sound a person can make. Since there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, sometimes letter combinations need to be used to make a phoneme. A letter can also represent different phonemes. After some consolidation they learn a new sound and learn how to apply this to reading and writing. Each week the children will learn new tricky words. These are words that they need to recognise when reading. It does wonders for their confidence and fluency. 

In June the children will take a phonics screening test. The Phonics test contains 40 words, divided in 2 sections of 20 words, which children are asked to read. Some of these words will be real words, some will be nonsense words. Children will be expected to blend sounds to read the words. Nonsense words are used to check a child's ability to blend sounds using phonic knowledge, regardless of what the word might be. This is nothing to be worried about and more information will be passed on nearer the time.