Phonics

1. How sounds are represented by written letters. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents an mmm sound.
2. How sounds can be blended together to make words. For example, they will be taught that the sounds of the letters ‘c-a-t’ blend together to make the word ‘cat’.

At St Johns we teach Letters and Sounds as our systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics. 

The phonic approach encourages directly linking letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes), and to teach children pure sounds like ah, b, k when encountering the alphabet. So, children learn how to put sounds represented by letters or letter groups (like ch or igh) together to read words in a more straightforward way.