Improving Your Child’s Phonics and Reading

Our fully qualified teachers, experienced in the teaching of Phonics, embed these skills within every lesson alongside teaching other vital reading skills.

What is Phonics?

Phonics is where we teach sounds and letters of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound ‘k’ can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch. Teaching children to sound out and blend the sounds of letters together helps them to decode unfamiliar or unknown words and supports them to read independently.

Phonics Screening Test

Children across the nation who are in Year 1 will complete the Phonics Screening Check between 12–16 June 2023. The gov.uk website clearly explains "The purpose of the phonics screening check will be to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. Children who have not reached this level should receive extra support from their school to ensure they can improve their decoding skills, and will then have the opportunity to retake the phonics screening check." Children will see a total of 40 words.

How Can Kip McGrath, Peterborough Help Your Child?

The child and their individual learning will always be the main focus and we aim to ensure their reading is progressing overall, as opposed to just learning a decoding skill. Taking a reading approach ensures that children have the skills needed to decode but also helps them to read words within sentences giving what they read some meaning, supporting comprehension and understanding too. In the centre we teach reading using overlearning and repetition, supported with reading booklets. Comprehension tasks start basic where needed and develop steadily to embed reading fluency and overall understanding. Use of phonics, word building activities and spelling activities all complement the reading booklets and progress made. Throughout sessions, these skills are brought together by the expertise of experienced teacher knowledge.

Top Tips

Decoding and blending is a taught skill, however embedding these skills comes from practice, overlearning and seeing the graphemes in familiar and unfamiliar words regularly. Here are some tips to help support you and your child:

 Read together - share books that your child can read and some trickier ones too.

 Modelling - show your child how to sound out and blend and let them copy you. You could also let them be the ‘teacher’ too!

 Practice - support your child to read real and nonsense words.

Need more help? Book a free assessment today to support your child with improving their reading at www.kipmcgrath.co.uk/peterborough-north