Phonics

We are committed to using the best teaching methods to teach children to read.  An essential ingredient in a child's reading development is the development of phonic knowledge and skills. 

Why is this?  Reading and writing are artificial codified communication systems invented by humans.  Unfortunately, humans are not born with a natural ability to read and write; each person has to learn these systems for themselves - and that's hard work!  However, the human brain is hard-wired for sound and speech and it is this natural ability that underpins phonics teaching.  If children can exploit the ability to learn sounds then they can use this to learn the sounds of our reading system and then learn how to write those sounds as spellings.  It is a lot of work for the human brain but with a consistent, taught and practised system all children will learn to read and write.

We have chosen what we consider to be the best phonics teaching programme of all, Sounds-Write.  Almost all of our teaching and support staff are trained in its delivery and you can read more about it in the paper below.