If you have any concerns about a child, please do not hesitate to report your concern to one of our Designated Safeguarding Leads- Dawn Deacon (head@isleham.cambs.sch.uk), Clare Williamson (cwilliamson@isleham.cambs.sch.uk) or Lisa Dennis (finance@isleham.cambs.sch.uk) or telephoning 01638 780336. If you think you or the child is in immediate danger and need urgent help, please call the police on 999. Alternatively, you can contact the local authority safeguarding team directly- if you are not a professional involved with the child or family, you do not have to give your name and your conversation will be treated confidentially. Telephone: 0345 045 5203 (8-6pm Monday to Friday) 01733 234 724 (out of hours) Email: referralcentre.children@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
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How We Teach Phonics

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read and write. It is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds and understand the link between the sound (phoneme) and the way it is written (grapheme).

At Isleham CE Primary school we follow the Song of Sounds programme. This is a phonics programme in which individual letters or letter sounds are ‘blended’ to form groups of letters or sounds, and those groups are then blended to form complete words.

Children throughout Reception and Key Stage 1 take part in a daily phonics session. These focus on developing reading, writing and speaking and listening skills. The ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme is divided into 3 stages, explained in more detail below.

Children are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’ – words with spellings that are unusual. These include the words ‘to’, ‘was’, ‘said’ and ‘the’. ‘Tricky words’ are ones that we can’t sound – so these words just need to be remembered.

Here are some of the terms you may come across in our phonics work

vowels – the open sounds / letters of the alphabet: a,e,i,o and u

consonants – sounds/ letters of the alphabet that are not vowels.

blend – to merge individual sounds together to pronounce a word, e.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap

cluster – two (or three) letters making two (or three) sounds, e.g. the first three letters of 'straight' are a consonant cluster

digraph – two letters making one sound, e.g. sh, ch, th, ph.

vowel digraphs – two vowels which, together, make one sound, e.g. ai, oo, ow

split digraph – two letters, split, making one sound, e.g. a-e as in make or i-e in site

grapheme – letter or a group of letters representing one sound, e.g. sh, ch, igh, ough (as in 'though')

mnemonic — a device for memorising and recalling something, such as a snake shaped like the letter 'S'

phoneme — the smallest single identifiable sound, e.g. the letters 'sh' represent just one sound, but 'sp' represents two (/s/ and /p/)