Phonics

At Woodford Valley, phonics is discretely taught in Reception and Key Stage One in order to teach and develop early reading and writing skills. As from September 2022, we follow the Lesley Clarke’s Synthetic Phonics programme. More information about the content of this programme can be found here: https://www.lesleyclarkesyntheticphonics.co.uk/

In Reception, children work on Phases 2, 3 and 4 where they begin to associate phonemes with their corresponding graphemes and learn how to blend phonemes to read and segment to write. In Year One, children work on Phase 5, in Year Two, children move on to Phase 6. During this current transition period between phonics programmes, Year one will be consolidating phase 4 before moving on to phase 5 and in Year 2 there will be consolidation of phase 5 before moving on to phase 6. The programme follows a structured approach with built in interventions to help children ‘keep up’ rather than catch up. Reading books are fully decodable and are matched to the phonic phase and phonemes taught that week.

Useful links:

Phonics Policy

Articulation of phonemes

Presentation to Parents February 2023