In our school, we follow the Little Wandle phonics scheme. Our Big Cat reading books are based on this. The children have daily phonics sessions and also have a dedicated phonics space to explore during Child Initiated Learning.

In order for children in Reception to read, they will have daily Phonic sessions to help them. Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by linking sounds (phonemes) and the symbols that represent them (graphemes, or letter groups). A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound and in the first term of Reception, children will learn Phase 2 phonemes. To access these, please click on the link below.

In order to support your child with saying the phonemes correctly, please click on the following link:

The aim is for children to be able to see a letter and then say the sound it represents out loud. This is called decoding. While children are learning to say the sounds of letters out loud, they will also begin to learn to write these letters (encoding). 

Children then need to go from saying the individual sounds of each letter, to being able to blend the sounds and say the whole word. For some children, this takes a little time to master and all children learn at different rates.

As children move into their second term at school, they will begin to learn the next phase in Phonics.