Supersonic Phonic Friends
As a school we have successfully adopted ‘Super Sonic Phonics Friends’, to support us with the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. This ensures a consistent approach across early years and Key Stage 1 (Key Stage 2 when required.) ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends’ is based on the well-recognised ‘Letters and Sounds’. Super Supersonic Phonic Friends is an enchanted adventure of phonics where along the way children will meet several friendly woodland characters who represent each literacy skill involved. Supported by the children’s new ‘Supersonic friends’ and rhyming captions and phrases, this approach will ensure children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing.
How we teach phonics
In phonics, we teach children that the letters of the alphabet 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 Reception and follows a very specific sequence that allows our children to build on their previous phonic knowledge and master specific phonic strategies as they move through school. The focus is on listening and identifying the different sounds we hear in our environment and in songs, stories and rhymes. Once children can hear and differentiate between sounds, they are ready to begin exploring how words are made up of sounds and start playing games like I spy.
During the Reception we begin to look at single letter sounds and the representing spelling for this. Children then begin to read and write three letter words; matching the words to the sound they can hear.