Literacy
Within our schools, we use the Twinkl Phonics programme for the teaching of phonics and early reading. This ensures that children are ready to begin the more formal aspect of phonics teaching at the beginning of the Reception year.
It is our aim that, by the end of the reception year, children are able to read and write short sentences using their phonic knowledge.
We ensure that children are exposed to high quality literature through the use of our daily storytimes, English circle times and exposure to a diverse range of texts. This allows us to develop the children's love of reading as well as supporting vocabulary development.
We begin the Twinkl Phonics programme with our Nursery children on entry to Nursery starting with Level 1 which is the foundational stage, focusing on developing children's listening and communication skills before letter sounds, using seven aspects as detailed below. It builds essential phonological awareness and vocabulary through fun, play-based activities, preparing preschoolers (ages 3-4) for later reading and writing.
Level 1 phonics (The 7 Aspects)
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Environmental Sounds: Recognizing sounds in the world (e.g., traffic, animals).
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Instrumental Sounds: Identifying sounds from instruments (e.g., drums, shakers).
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Body Percussion: Using sounds made with the body (e.g., clapping, stomping).
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Rhythm & Rhyme: Exploring patterns and rhyming words.
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Alliteration: Hearing initial sounds in words (e.g., "silly snakes").
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Voice Sounds: Experimenting with different voices and sounds (e.g., whispers, loud voices).
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Oral Blending & Segmenting: Saying sounds in a word and blending them, or breaking words into sounds, without letters.
Alongside their phonics journey, we focus on attention, listening and speaking skills. This means we focus on building the foundations for phonics skills by developing children’s ability to hear and discriminate sounds, say words, orally blend sounds into words and develop a child's ability to listen to, make, explore and talk about sounds.
