In Nursery and Reception, your child will learn to read the Set 1 sounds by sight. They will also learn how to blend them together to read words e.g. c-a-t = cat. In Year 1 and Year 2, they will then move onto learning to Set 2 and Set 3 sounds. 

Before your child can start to read, they need to learn to: 

• Say the sound that is represented by each letter or groups of letters. These are called ‘speed sounds’. 
• Know how to blend the sounds together in a word to read it e.g. c-a-t = cat. This is called ‘sound- blending’. 

At Normanton-on-Soar we teach phonics using the RWI (Read Write Inc) programme.

The children start in Nursery where we learn to tune in our listening to hear sounds in words.  We start listening out for, and saying, the sound at the start of the word.  We ask for a bbbbanana or an aaaaapple at snack time.

The children move on to learning about a letter each week and do a range of craft and play activities linked to the letter and the sound.

In Reception the children begin discrete phonics teaching each day and learn the letters in the RWI order and method helped by Fred Frog.

The children begin to blend words and use the phonics in their writing, reading simple books linked to the taught sounds and this is the start of their journey into reading.

The children will bring home a book linked to the letters that they have learnt in phonics and will be able to read all of the words using their phonics skills.

The journey continues into KS1 and the children learn more complex sound letter correspondences.  The children become more fluent readers and learn words that cannot be read with phonics.  We call these "red words".

In year 1 the children will take part in the national phonics screening check which will determine if they are working at the expected level.

Please see below for more information about our phonics teaching.