Phonics & Reading | Dussindale Primary School

Phonics

& Reading

At Dussindale we believe that reading is fundamental to every child's learning journey and an essential skill for their future success. We are committed to creating a rich reading environment where all children, regardless of their starting point, can develop a love for reading and the skills to become confident, independent readers.

In order to achieve that we provide high quality curriculums for learning to read, learning to comprehend and a school wide reading culture to promote reading for pleasure.

Learning to Read

Sounds Write Phonics

We use Sounds-Write at Dussindale. A programme which is clear, consistent and cumulative. In Reception, Y1 and Y2, the children will have a daily Sounds-Write lesson. This programme is successful in teaching children to read and spell because it starts with what all children know from a very young age – the sounds of our spoken language. Then, using a very systematic approach, it teaches them how these sounds are coded within our writing system. Sounds-Write leaves nothing to chance and provides a clear scope and sequence for teaching phonics, from simple, one-syllable to more complex words.

The children are taught to decode and encode through explicit teaching and practice of the key skills and concepts:

Skills

• Blending

• Segmenting

• Phonic Manipulation

Concepts

• Letters are symbols that represent sounds

• Sounds can be spelled using 1,2,3 or 4 letters

• The same sound can be spelled in more than one way (fly, bright, hibernate, tie)

• Many spellings can represent more than one sound (head, seat, break)

Decodable Books

Our reading books are closely matched to the Sounds-Write phonics program. Children will be given a book which closely matches their Phonic knowledge and can be used to help them consolidate their learning. The use of phonetically decodable books encourages the use of phonics as the first approach to reading unknown words.

Sounds-Write Website