What is phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read by helping them understand the relationship between letters and sounds. We use a systematic synthetic phonics approach, which means we teach children to:

Recognise the sounds (phonemes) that letters make

Blend these sounds together to read words

Segment words into sounds for spelling

Learning phonics gives children the essential skills they need to become confident, fluent readers.

Our phonics programme

At Woodley School and College, we use Twinkl to teach phonics. This is a validated programme that meets the Department for Education's criteria for high-quality phonics teaching.

Twinkl Phonics was selected as it offers us the flexibility within the scheme to tailor the approach for the individual needs of each student, while maintaining the progression through the phonics scheme.

How we teach phonics

Pupils in KS1 and KS2 have formal phonics daily. In KS3 onwards, we understand our pupils still require phonics input, but we alter this approach to have a focus on SPAG.

Children learn in small groups, individually and through specialist sessions, i.e. Attention Autism.

Phonics is taught by class teachers.

Children progress through different phonics phases, learning new sounds and how to blend and segment them. We use a range of engaging activities, games, and resources to make learning fun and memorable.