Phonics

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” — Frederick Douglass

At WHPS we use Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) as our phonics program.

We believe that reading is the bedrock for all academic learning, and a vital skill for ongoing achievement, fulfilment and communication. Therefore, it is imperative that children are given the best start in their reading journey, which we deliver through our phonics teaching.

Essential Letters and Sounds is a DfE approved systematic synthetic phonics programme which is designed to teach children how to read through the act of decoding and blending.

Essential Letters and Sounds 

Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen Phonics programme. The aim of ELS is ‘Getting all children to read well, quickly’. It teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words. 

Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently.  

We teach children to:  

• Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently  

• Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.  

The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading. 

ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.  

Supporting Reading at Home 

We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound) 

We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills: 

            Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word. 

            Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding. 

            Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life! 

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. 

Videos to support the pronunciation of sounds

Phase 2 Pronunciation video

Useful Resources

 

 

 

 

 

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