Phonics

In September 2023, we will be introducing our new Phonics scheme called

'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised'.

On Tuesday 9th May 2023 at 9am, we will be holding a Phonics Q&A session for all parents/carers.

Please do come along to this event if you have any questions about this decision and/or to find out more information about Little Wandle.

At Sawtry Infant School, we are dedicated and passionate about ensuring all children are fluent and enthusiastic readers and writers. We believe that phonics provides the foundation of early reading and encourages children to become independent readers and writers.  Through Phonics, children learn to segment (split words into sounds) and blend (put sounds together to read) words in order to support their reading and spelling ability. This is the process of 'decoding'. The teaching of Phonics is of our highest priority to create not only confident readers, but inspire a love of reading across different texts.

Sawtry Infant School uses Monster Phonics as our Phonics programme. We use this to teach children the essential skills needed to develop their reading ability. Phonics is taught daily in all year groups with a sound or group of words as the focus of the day. Adults refer to these focus sounds throughout the day and link these to stories, songs and classroom instructions.

Monster Phonics is delivered to the whole class as this enables teachers to ensure that Phonics learning can be embedded consistently across all subjects, providing a firm literacy environment for our early readers. Children who may be finding some of the sounds trickier to recognise take part in our Monster Phonics intervention programme which reviews sounds in an alternative activity. Using the Monster Phonics assessment tools, teachers can quickly identify any misconceptions or misunderstandings in sound recognition and word reading.

So… what is Monster Phonics?!

Monster Phonics is used at Sawtry Infant School as we believe that it provides child with an engaging, multi-sensory and interactive approach to learning the different sounds in words. Through using 10 fun and unique characters, letter sounds are grouped together and given their own colour, which links with the character. The colour coding of sounds helps children to identify sounds quickly, therefore becoming more fluent with their word reading.

For example:

We can then colour code words and whole sentences following this approach.

The green snake lay in a tree.

Following this colour coding approach, children can begin to easily decode words to read fluently and independently. Each lesson focuses on a new sound or group of words, whilst recapping on sounds and words that have been taught previously. Lessons are based around a variety of songs, stories and rhymes which involve the focus Monster. Then children complete an activity or task which helps to embed the sounds into their long term memory.

Guided Reading

Monster Phonics links also with our Guided Reading books, to ensure that children have access to practice their Phonics knowledge across books that are appropriate to their ability. The Monster Phonics colour coding system is also evident in these books so that children can apply this skill throughout their reading. Our Guided Reading books provide an opportunity for both the adult and child to read part of the story, even for our earliest readers. You can find out more about how we structure Guided Reading here.

Spellings

For Key Stage 1, our Spelling programme links closely with Monster Phonics. Sounds which have been the focus in class will be the theme of the spelling words for that week. For example, if the focus sound is ‘ew’, then the spellings for that week will contain words only with ‘ew’.

Take a look at Monster Phonics below for our progression maps which show what our children will be learning and when. There is also a video below to introduce the monsters in a little more detail! For more information or for any questions regarding Phonics, please contact your child’s class teacher or Mr Alletson (English leader).