Phonics Teaching at Oakley Primary Academy

Phonics is the name given to the process of learning the sounds, names and shapes of the letters that make up the English language. There are 44 different sounds, made up of singular or groups of letters. Some of these sounds then have a variety of ways of writing them down.

At Oakley, children in Reception and Year 1 are taught phonics daily following Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression. We use decodeable texts to embed the learning of phonics into reading development.

There is some key vocabulary that both children and adults use: Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound a letter, or group of letters makes. Grapheme – the written shape of a phoneme Digraphs and Trigraphs – two or three letters making one sound Blend – two or more sounds said closely together e.g. spl, fl, xt, ump

Children in Reception are taught handwriting and letter formation alongside their phonic learning. Children are taught the Little Wandle Rhymes to support the correct letter formation.

Spelling at Oakley Primary

As the children move from using phonetic decoding, we use Spelling Shed Spelling as a basis for teaching the variety of spelling rules that the English language follows, and often does not follow!

We continue to value the importance of learning to spell in a variety of ways that promote active and memorable learning. If you need any additional information about how you can support this at home, please speak to your child's class teacher.