Phonics at Manor Field
Since September 2022, we have been using 'Essential Letters and Sounds' as our phonics scheme across the school. Reading is a fundamental skill and the programme is tailored to meet the needs of all children, in order for them to learn to read quickly, and to close any gaps that they may have.
ELS at home
Some children are on the ELS scheme at our junior school to support their reading development. If your child is using ELS at school (please ask your child's teacher if you are unsure), this means that they are learning how to read using Essential Letters and Sounds. This is a phonics programme and supports your children to develop the skills and knowledge needed for reading. ELS s published by Oxford University Press. You can access their Oxford Owl for Home site here.
It is important that your child continues to practise these skills to ensure that they can become clear, confident and fluent readers.
How can I help my child?
To best support your child when they are learning to read, we suggest that you read the decodable text provided by the school 5 times across the week. Spending 10 minutes a day reading with your child will hugely support them in their journey to becoming an independent reader.
Another key way to support your child it to read to them too! Share exciting and engaging books and stories with them.
It is a key part of learning to read that children re-read words and sentences that they can decode (sound out) until they are fluent (read with ease and precision). By reading texts several times children have the greatest opportunity to achieve this fluency.
The texts sent home by your child’s school are carefully matched to the teaching taking place. Your child will be practising what they have been taught in school with you at home. Your child should be able to decode and read their phonics book independently, though they may need some support with blending at the beginning of their reading journey. There will be some words that are not decodable, we call these ‘harder to read and spell’, you can help your child with these words when they are reading.
Pronouncing the Pure Sounds - videos to help!
When children are learning to read, to enable them to blend sounds together to form words, we need to pronounce the sound clearly.
You can use these examples below to support you:
How to blend - video to help!
ELS Grapheme Chart
A grapheme are individual letters and groups of letters that represent single phonemes. Here is our Grapheme Chart. We use this to help teach the children how to spell words. There are different phonemes that create the same sound. The chart helps us work out which one to use.
