At St John’s we use the Read Write Inc. programme and take a systematic approach to teaching phonics through discrete daily sessions. Children are taught individual phonemes (sounds) and corresponding graphemes (written letter) and then develop skills in blending and segmenting. Blending involves putting sounds together for reading e.g. c-a-t (cat), sh-o-p (shop). In Reception, we use a soft toy character, Fred the frog, to help with this. Fred speaks only in sounds, which is referred to as Fred talk. Segmenting involves splitting sounds up for spelling e.g. dog (d-o-g), thick (th-i-ck). The children use their fingers to assist with this as they segment the words. This is referred to as using their Fred fingers.

Pure sounds are taught to the children which involves them being articulated clearly and precisely. For a demonstration of each sound please click the following links. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gxxLnfS5Ts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATYGeyyL6c

If you require further support with helping your child with phonics, please speak to their class teacher or Miss Coyne, our Phonics Leader. Our phonics workshops have proved extremely popular so continue to check the school diary for future dates. These will also be announced in the school weekly newsletters.

For phonics games and activities please click on the links below:

Alphablocks
Phase 2 phonics

Phonics – sound order

Set 1

m a s d t i n p g o c k u b f e l h sh r j v y w th z ch qu x ng

ff(coffee and muffin)

ss (class on the grass)

zz (pizza and fizz)

ck ( tick tock clock)

ll (sell the doll)

Set 2

ay (may I play?)

ee (what can you see?)

igh (fly high)

ow (blow the snow)

oo (look at a book poo at the zoo)

ar (start the car)

or (shut the door)

air (That’s not fair)

ir (whirl and twirl)

ou (shout it out)

oy (toy for a boy)

Extra Sounds

ie (terrible tie)

ue (Come to the rescue)

wh (whisk whisk)

ph (Take a photo)

oe (oh, that’s my toe)

au (Paul the Astronaut)

ey (cheeky monkey)

Kn (knock knock)

Set 3

ea (cup of tea)

oi (spoil the oy)

a-e (make a cake)

e-e (go Pete and Steve)

i-e (nice smile

o-e (phone home)

u-e (huge brute)

aw (yawn at dawn)

are(care and share)

ur (nurse with a purse)

er (a better letter

ow (brown cow)

ai (snail in the rain)

oa (goat in a boat)

ew (chew the stew)

ire (fire fire)

ear (what can you hear?)

ure (sure it’s pure)