Phonics - ELS
We are excited to announce that from September 2022 we will begin using the phonics scheme, Essential Letters and Sounds.
Below we have collated as much information as possible to ensure that parents are able to continue to support their children with learning, outside of school. Of course if you would like any more information or to discuss other ways in which you can help your child learn to read then our door is always open.
Hopefully you now have a clear idea of Phonics and in particular our chosen scheme to learn from, Essential Letters and Sounds. The aim is very clear - Getting All Children to Read Well, Quickly.
Phonics in school is carried out first thing in the morning, we find this is when the pupils are most alert and focused and it also means we have the remainder of the school day to continue to reinforce the new sound during other activities ensuring that its really embedded in the child's memory.
Below are videos for phases 2 and 3 of the phonics scheme. They demonstrate the pronunciation of a letter and how it should verbally be translated to a sound, it is vital that when children are learning phonics they are producing the sound rather than the letter name.
Phase 2 sounds.mp4
Phase 3 sounds
Phase 5 sounds
An important note to remember is that children can easily become confused and forget, that is why following a scheme like ELS is crucial to the learning process with phonics. The structured scheme introduces the letter and sound at the correct time during the correct phase. We welcome parental input with learning and would encourage our parents to contact the class teacher for information about the current letter and sound or which order they will be taught in.
Oxford Owl e-books
Over previous years as a school we have always sent home pupil reading books and reading records, often we find that these aren't returned to school, aren't brought in on the correct day or are taken home but not looked at or read. They also with time and use begin to look tatty, pages fall out and can get ripped. The cost to replace reading resources can be huge, and this money can take away from other resources and areas within school so whilst making the changes with our Phonics Scheme to ELS we have also signed up to Oxford Owl. Oxford Owl
library contains 100 fully decodable eBooks from our most popular series and all sequenced in Letters and Sounds Sets and Phases. The library covers Letters and Sounds Phases 2-5 and contains 18 progressive Sets.
Recently Oxford Owl have made improvements to the library meaning we can now assign specific books to pupils, groups or classes and track their progress.
Printed books will still of course be available to pupils who would prefer this, however we are delighted to be fetching reading into the times using technology to promote reading.