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Brooke School

Pre-phonics 

Before learners begin to recognise letters and sounds that they make, we develop attention and listening skills, early social communication and sound discrimination skills using musical instruments, listening games, rhythm and nursery rhymes. 

We also teach learners how to interact with books and stories e.g. turning pages, expressing a preference for a text and listening to an adult read a story. 

Once learners are ready, we begin to learn about letter sounds in a fun and interactive way. Learners will play games where they practice their listening skills and tuning into words that have the same initial sound and will begin to match these sounds to a written letter.

Phonics

Our learners journey to become fluent, independent readers starts with Phonics. At Brooke School, we use the Pearson Phonics Bug Club Programme to help learners learn to read. The programme follows an approach of synthesising phonemes associated with graphemes a child sees; or put another way, learning to read by blending the sounds associated with the letters a child sees. The programme is the product of extensive research on effective ways to teach children how to read. 

Learners are taught a daily structured, systematic phonics session, following the Phonics Bug club scheme. this is a DfE approved scheme and our school has complete fidelity to it. Daily sessions follow the same structure: 

• Revisit and review - learners recap prior learning 
• Teach - learners learn a new grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondence
• Practise - learners consolidate new learning 
• Apply - learners apply new learning into a writing or reading context to strengthen their understanding 

Grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondence for reading and spelling are taught in a specified order. 'Tricky words' that cannot be decoded using phonics are also taught systematically through out. 

Learners are assessed regularly to ensure that any learners experiencing difficulties are identified quickly and appropriate support can be put in place in a timely manner. 

For more information on Phonics, how it helps learners to learn to read and how you can support your learner at home, please click on the links and watch the video below.