A Vision for Phonics

At the Spires Federation, we recognise that reading is a key life skill and that the ability to read brings life-long pleasure and happiness.

The teaching of phonics and early reading throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 is of the highest priority. Our vision is that all children quickly become successful, enthusiastic and motivated readers.

We want our children to have the ability to recognise, blend and segment sounds, in order to read words, as well as reading sight words, in order to become confident, fluent readers, who show a good understanding of what they have read. Our Golden Threads of worldly wise, aspirations and well-being run clearly through our cohesive, progressive Phonics curriculum. We strongly believe that teaching children to read and write independently, as quickly as possible, is one of the core purposes of a primary school. These fundamental skills not only hold the keys to the rest of the curriculum but also have a huge impact of children’s self-esteem and future life chances.

As a Federation, we are able to achieve this by following the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised programme. This includes teaching synthetic phonics, sight vocabulary, decoding and encoding words and also provides children the opportunity to develop reading comprehension skills. With the ability to read, we are providing our children the opportunity to demonstrate our key values of success, happiness, inspiration, nurture, everyone