St Thomas More Primary Phonics Curriculum

At St Thomas More, we want children to become confident and enthusiastic readers, with a lifelong love of reading. We believe that phonics provides the foundations of learning to make the development into confident, fluent reading and writing easier.  

Through daily, systematic and consistent high-quality phonics teaching, children learn to segment words to support spelling and blend sounds to read words.

Phonics is taught through the Sounds Write programme in Reception, Key Stage 1 and into Key Stage 2 if needed. Reception is taught the initial code, Year 1 is taught the extended code and Year 2 continues the extended code. Lessons are taught daily to the whole class and interventions are used in the afternoon for targeted children. 

Children will be equipped with the skills to decode unfamiliar words using strategies that they have been taught in their daily lessons. They can then focus on developing their fluency and comprehension as they move through school. This will lead to a love of reading and children taking pleasure in exploring the rich literary world around them with a firm phonics foundation to support them.