Early Reading & Phonics

At our school, we recognise that learning to read is one of the most important skills a child will develop. Becoming a confident and fluent reader opens the door to learning across the whole curriculum and helps children to develop their vocabulary, imagination and understanding of the world around them. We are committed to ensuring that every child develops strong foundations in reading from the very beginning of their time with us.

Danehill’s Approach to Phonics

We use Sounds-Write, a high-quality, systematic synthetic phonics programme, to teach children the skills they need to become confident readers and spellers.

Sounds-Write uses a sound-to-print approach, helping children to understand the relationship between the sounds they hear in spoken language and the way those sounds are represented in writing. Through carefully structured and progressive teaching, children learn the knowledge and skills they need to read, spell and write with increasing confidence and independence.

Phonics is taught systematically, with children building securely on what they already know before moving on to new learning.

Reading Books

To support the phonics learning taking place in school, your child will be provided with a reading book that closely matches the sounds and skills they are currently working on in class. They may also be given a second book to help them revisit and embed sounds they have previously learned.

As children become more familiar with the words and sentences in a book, they can focus less on decoding each individual word and more on reading smoothly and understanding what they have read.

Once your child is secure and confident with the unit of sound they are working on, they will move on to the next stage of their phonics learning and their reading book will be changed in school accordingly.

Developing a Love of Reading

While phonically appropriate books are essential for practising the skills children are learning in school, reading is about much more than learning to decode words.

We strongly encourage families to continue sharing a wide variety of books at home alongside your child's school reading book. Stories, picture books, poetry, information books and favourite books that children choose for themselves all help to develop vocabulary, comprehension, imagination and, importantly, a love of reading for pleasure.

By working together at home and at school, we can help children develop both the skills they need to read successfully and the love of reading that we hope will stay with them throughout their lives.