Phonics and Early Reading

Phonics

At St Peter's, we recognise the importance of quality phonics teaching in providing a solid foundation for learning to read and write. 

We follow the Tower Hamlets Education Partnership (THEP) comprehensive systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme, designed in-line with the National Curriculum objectives and validated by the DfE, to teach word reading and spelling successfully.   

The aim of the THEP programme is to promote the use of phonics as the prime route to reading unknown words before any subsequent comprehension strategies are applied – ‘get the word off the page first’. The programme provides a structured route for children to meet or exceed the expected standard in the Y1 Phonics Screening Check and all national curriculum expectations for word reading through decoding by the end of KS1.

What is Systematic Synthetic Phonics?

Systematic synthetic phonics is the step to fluent word recognition with the ultimate goal being the automatic and effortless reading of all words. By repeated blending, segmenting and manipulation of words, pupils get to know the grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs), and once this happens, they should be encouraged to read them straight off in reading text, rather than continuing to sound and blend them aloud because they feel that this is what is required.

Early Reading

Our Early Reading scheme closely links to our phonics programme and employs the use of an extensive library of decodable and diverse books. Children are supported to progress through reading stages with the aim of becoming a 'free-reader'.

Parent Resources:

Useful book websites: