Owl class

At Little Sutton we use Letters and Sounds to teach phonics.  If you follow the link you’ll see how the 6 phases of phonics are organised and you’ll find resources and games to match each phase so you can support learning at home.

Last half term we focussed on Phase 1 to support children in bridging the gap created by closures during lockdown.  Phase 1 is a crucial element as it really helps children tune into sounds.  We began introducing phase 2 sounds, s.a.t.p.i.n but we’ll refresh these before moving on to the next set of letters.

We teach the children that letters have a name and a sound. Aa has the name ‘ay’ and makes the sound ‘a’.  We learn to write the upper and lower case symbols (with focus on lower case intitally).  We learn to identify sounds at the beginning, middle and end of words.  We use sound buttons to segment a word into individual sounds then blend them together to hear the word e.g. s.a.t. sat, p.i.n. pin.  As each letter or sound is introduced, the children explore reading and writing words using those letters.

This year is all about inspiring a love of books as we get ready to read indpendently.  Reading isn’t the act of learning to say the words on the page; reading is interpreting those words to escape, to learn, to discover, to imagine, to experience and to wonder.  We want our children to experience lots and lots of great quality books.  Though we as adults may be saying the words on the pages for them, the children can engage in the ‘reading’.  They can talk about what’s happening, predict what might happen, place themselves in the book by saying what they’d do, join in repeated phrases or complete rhymes, and they can see us as readers, pointing to words we say and using expression in our voices.

As we move through the phonics phases, we’ll support independent reading with simple books of sentences made up predominantly of the letters and sounds they have covered.  These books lack story, character and wonderment as have very limited vocabulary.  They serve to allow the children to see that they can ‘read’ and build their confidence as they practise decoding.

It is really important that children continue to experience wonderful texts with rich language and that they see this sharing of stories as READING.

We follow Whiterose Maths across the school. We lay the foundations for maths through exploring grouping, matching, sorting and ordering before we introduce the numbers.  Numbers are then introduced very slowly.  This is purposeful.  Up until Christmas, we will only work on 0 – 5.  These numbers are looked at in depth.  We learn that a number can be a value as well as a quantity.  We learn to estimate quantities by sight as well as counting individual items in a set, we explore more or less as well as looking at how we can make the numbers e.g 4 can be made with 0 and 4, 1 and 3, 2 and 2. By building these relationships between number and value, we set the foundations for confident mathematicians who are later able to manipulate numbers and calculations in problem solving as they move through the school.