Phonics

At Stanley Common we believe that fostering a life-long love of reading is one of the most important things we do. The journey towards being a confident and fluent reader, reading for pleasure and learning, starts in Reception as pupils begin to learn phonics.

Children learn best when teachers and parents work together in partnership, so we want to make sure that all parents and carers feel comfortable with the concept of phonics. You may feel that the way children learn to read now is very different from the way you were taught!

In our school we follow a Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme called All Aboard Phonics.

All Aboard Phonics is a complete systematic, synthetic phonics programme for Reception and Year 1 in UK schools. It has a similar structure to the Letters and Sounds curriculum.

It is designed to enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills early in Reception, with a systematic introduction of the phonemes used in English. From there it provides a structured route for children to build on that foundation, so that they meet or exceed the expected standard in the year one (Y1) Phonics Screening Check.

They will then have the skills needed to continue towards becoming confident and fluent readers and writers in Years 2 and 3.

Part of the system includes the use of pictophones which teach reading the way the brain wants to learn: it’s visual and fun. With the help of visual prompts, a child can easily decode words correctly, even tricky ones. It’s ideal for visual learners, dyslexics, beginners, or struggling readers.

Each image represents a sound in the English language. For example, the Toad About to Explode represents the /t/ sound. The pictophones are an easy visual representation of the sounds of each phoneme.