Early Reading & Phonics
At Garrett Hall, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. It is our intention to give our pupils the best possible foundations to enable them to succeed in this journey. The bedrock which underpins this is high quality phonics teaching. We teach phonics through the Bug Club Phonics Programme which is a comprehensive, phonics approach to support the teaching of the letters of the alphabet and their matching sounds.
Phonic sessions are taught 5 days a week for approximately 30 minutes each day. Children in Nursery, Reception and Year One (and some of our Year 2 children where appropriate) are taught in groups based on their ability for phonics within their year group. The key skills of blending sounds for reading, segmenting words for spelling, recognising ‘tricky’ words, learning letter shapes and names as well as learning the alphabet are all vital components children learn as readers and writers.
Phonics teaching is embedded in our school using the Bug Club Phonics Programme to compliment our experienced teachers knowledge. Children are given Bug Club decodable phonics books which are linked to the phase that they are learning as a home reader. This enables them to practice their phonics knowledge at home with books that are matched to their phonics ability.
Alongside children's Bug Club phonics book, they will also be able to choose an appropriate 'reading for pleasure' colour banded book from a variety of different reading schemes to share at home. These books do not necessarily match with the phonics phase the children are currently on but are to develop a joy of reading with support from an adult at home.
Help for Parents and carers
Bug Club Sound mats for Phases, 2, 3 and 5:
All about Early Reading and phonics at our school:
