Phonics at St Paul's - Essential Letters and Sounds
From September 2023 our school will begin to use Essential Letters and Sounds as our phonics scheme.
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.
Reading with your child
Reading books are changed once per week. This allows your child to re-read each text several times, building their confidence and fluency. This is especially important as they begin to learn that the sounds within our language can be spelt in different ways.
For children, re-reading words and sentences that they can decode (sound out) until they are fluent (read with ease and precision) is a key part of learning to read. By reading texts several times, children have the greatest opportunity to achieve this fluency.
The texts sent home are carefully matched to the teaching taking place in school. Your child will be practising what they have been taught in school with you at home. We will only ask children to read books independently when they can decode these by themselves.
How to pronounce sounds
Click on the images below to play the videos
Harder to Read and Spell Words
HRS words, are words that children should know even though they have not yet been taught the relevant GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences) within these words. HRS words are common in the English language, and it is important that children can read and spell them. When teaching a new HRS, we always identify the graphemes (letters which represent the sound) within the word that make it tricky, e.g they (ey is tricky). Please see the Reception and Year 1 documents which outline the order and term in which these words will be taught at St Paul’s Infant School.
Please click on the documents below to view the HRS Words
Parent/Carer Information Presentations
How to support your child
Click the image below for information on how to support your child.
Click the image above to access the ELS eBook Library