Cleobury Mortimer Primary School

Phonics

The children at Cleobury Mortimer Primary School have a daily phonics lesson in EYFS and Year 1. At the end of Year 1 they take the Phonics Screening Check, a statutory test designed to assess children's decoding abilities to ensure they are ready to progress to reading fluency. 

If a child does not pass the phonics screening check, they are supported with extra interventions and scaffolding in Year 2, when they can retake the screening check.

At Cleobury Mortimer Primary School, we follow a phonics programme called Essential Letters and Sounds.

In addition to phonics teaching, children are read to daily, and echo reading is used to develop fluency. Children are also explicitly taught new vocabulary and the skills needed to read independently through daily reading lessons.

What is Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS)?

“Through our work as one of the Department for Education’s English Hubs, we have developed a way of teaching Letters and Sounds to ensure that all children are learning to read well and making speedy progress.”

”Our programme is rigorous, engaging and supports teachers to ensure that the lowest attaining children keep up rather than ‘catch up’. Children are making accelerated progress and they tell us their favourite lesson is phonics. Teachers feel empowered and love teaching our programme!”

For more information about this programme, visit their website:

https://essentiallettersandsounds.org/

For more information about phonics and how you can help at home here is a really good website with ideas and short video clips about how to pronounce pure sounds and how to blend. This will be really useful to support your child at home when they bring home their phonics book to practise the sound they have been working on in class.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/learn-to-read-phonics/