Beechwood Primary School

Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.

The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole language.

Within in foundation stage and Key stage 1, we use the Essential letters and sounds phonics scheme. All our reading is linked to phonics and we use phonics based reading books. All children will be reading books linked to the sounds that they have already learned. Children in Reception and Year 1 will keep the same book for the whole week and are expected to read it at least twice. 

The Essential letters and Sounds program is designed for children to keep up rather than catch up. 

Please find below a variety of resources to support your child with early reading and phonic knowledge.