Our Approach to Phonics

Phonics is an important aspect of children developing ‘reading and writing’ skills. It is taught daily for 20 minutes starting in Foundation One through to Key Stage One.

At Marshland we teach the children using ‘Little Wandle – Letters and Sounds’. Little Wandle is a systematic synthetic approach to teaching phonics that meets all the expectations of the National Curriculum. Your child will start to develop their ability to hear sounds when they start in Marshland nursery and the teaching of phonics continues into Reception and Key Stage One. It might also be appropriate for some children in Key Stage Two to be part of a phonic intervention group to support with their reading ability.

Further information

The Sounds of Letters

Tips for supporting your child:

• It is important for a child to learn lower case or small letters rather than capital letters at first. Most early books and games use lower case letters and your child will learn these first at school. Obviously you should use a capital letter when required, such as at the beginning of the child’s name, eg. Paul.

• When you talk about letters to your child, remember to use the letter souds: a buh cuh duh e….rather than the alphabet names of the letters: ay bee see dee ee. The reason for this is that sounding out words is practically impossible if you use the alphabet names, eg.cat, would sound like: see ay tee.

• When saying the sounds  of b, d, g, j  and w you will notice the ‘uh’ sound which follows each, for example buh, duh… You  cannot say the sound without it, however, try to emphasise the main letter sound. Additionally think about the s, l, m, n sounds these should be heard as s (as in kiss) and I (as in full) m (as in mum) and n (as in sun), rather than suh, luh, muh, nuh as these are not phonetically plausible pronunciations.

• Children are taught the technical vocabulary when taught phonics, so for example, they will learn to identify the digraph ‘ee’ as the ee insheep. Children develop their use of phonics for reading and writing with sound buttons and phoneme frames.

At Marshland Primary Academy we encourage a love of reading.

Please click on the links below  to view recommended books for each year group:

Further information for parents