At Hereward Primary School, all children in the Nursery, Reception and Year 1 are taught phonics daily. In Year 2, phonics is done in conjunction with learning about spelling, grammar and the use of punctuation. We use a system called 'Letters & Sounds' which teaches what is called 'synthetic phonics'.

What is Synthetic Phonics?

•How sounds are represented by letters

•How to decode letters to say sounds

•How to blend (synthesise) sounds to read words

Children are systematically taught:

•letter-sound correspondences

•to read words by blending sounds

•to spell by identifying sounds in words

   ( segmenting spoken words )

•to form letters

This is called 'segmenting' the sounds in a word. The children know this as 'sound talking'.

'Letters & Sounds' begins in our Nursery and continues up to Year 2. Children in Key Stage 2 may continue with aspects of ‘Letters & Sounds’ if required. It is broken up into 6 phases. Children are taught systematically throughout each stage.

At the end of Year 1, all children must participate in the Government's 'Phonics Screening Check'. This is to see if they are working at, or towards, the required national standard in terms of phonics skills.