Spelling & Phonics

Phonics

Helping children learn to read and write is one of the most important things we do at St Joseph’s. We want every child to become a confident, fluent reader who enjoys books and feels proud of their writing. To support this, we teach phonics every day using the Sounds~Write programme.

What our lessons look like

Our children love their Sounds~Write lessons! The programme’s simple, structured approach makes it accessible for all learners and ensures that every child makes strong progress in reading and spelling.

Sounds-Write teaches children that:

• Letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds.
• Each sound may be represented (spelled) by a 1, 2, 3 or 4-letter spelling.
• The same sound can be spelled in more than one way.
• Many spellings represent more than one sound.

Sounds-Write teaches these three key skills:

• Blending – putting sounds together to read words
• Segmenting – breaking words into sounds to spell them
• Phoneme manipulation – swapping sounds to create new words

Children in Reception to Year 4 enjoy a daily 30-minute session, where they play games, practise spelling patterns, and build and read words.
In Years 5 and 6, pupils take part in a shorter daily 15-minute session, focusing on reading and spelling longer, polysyllabic words such as inconspicuous and personification.

The level of challenge is carefully designed for each year group and closely linked to the teaching of English across the school.

How you can help at home?

Parents and carers play an important part in supporting children’s reading. Here are some simple ways you can help:

• Read together every day – even 10 minutes makes a difference.
• Encourage sounding out – let your child blend sounds to read new words instead of guessing.
• Play word games – spotting rhymes, changing first sounds, or making silly words all build phonics skills.
• Celebrate effort – praise your child when they try, even if they don’t get the word right straight away.

Find out more

If you’d like to learn more about our approach to phonics, you can access the free online Sounds~Write course for parents and carers.
👉 Click here to view the course and register