Phonics Curriculum

Phonics Curriculum

At Lady Jane Grey, we teach children to read and write using systematic synthetic phonics. We use the Unlocking Letters and Sounds programme to underpin the learning of all phonemes (sounds) and corresponding graphemes (letters). We teach a phoneme a day starting in Foundation by saying the phoneme and using an action to support every child’s learning style. We teach children to blend phonemes together to read words alongside teaching them common exception words (for Year 1 and Year 2) for them to read by sight.

In conjunction with this, children are taught to write the graphemes which represent each phoneme and use this knowledge to segment and blend. This enables them to spell words and whole sentences.

Spelling Curriculum

From year 2 onwards, children develop their understanding a range of spelling patterns, rules and words specific to each year-group. (To see these spelling lists for Year 2, Years 3 and 4, and Years 5 and 6 please click on the hyperlink.) Each week, pupils are assigned a new pattern or rule to learn during short spelling and handwriting sessions. To reinforce this learning, teachers will upload an image of their class’s spellings walls to Seesaw (our online learning facility) for them to practise at home.

In addition, each child has a bookmark for them to record their own set of personalised spellings to practise. These are derived from both spelling mistakes they frequently make and words they are learning to enhance their vocabulary. These lists are updated as soon as the pupils have shown mastery of their personalised spellings.