At Newhall Infant and Nursery School, we know that for all our children to become fluent readers and writers, phonics must be taught through a systematic and structured phonics programme.
To reflect the most up to date thinking on the effectiveness of phonics teaching, we transitioned to a new phonics scheme at Newhall in September 2022.
We’ve implemented the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised scheme to plan and provide daily engaging phonics lessons.
In phonics, we teach children that the letters of the alphabet each represent a different sound, that these can be used in a variety of combinations and are put together to make words. The children learn to recognise all of the different sounds and combinations that they might see when they are reading or writing.
Our phonics teaching starts in Early Years and follows a specific sequence that allows our children to build on their previous phonics knowledge and master specific phonics strategies as they move through school.
An important part of phonics teaching to be aware of when supporting your child at home, is the precise pronunciation of the sounds taught. It’s vital that only pure sounds are used and that ‘uh’ is not added to sounds, for example, pronouncing the ‘m’ sound as ‘muh’. Please see the videos below to hear how each sound pronounced correctly.