At Shiphay Learning Academy, we are committed to delivering high-quality, rigorous, and systematic phonics teaching that meets the needs of all children. Phonics teaching is provided daily in the Reception and Year 1, using Bug Club Phonics to deliver our systematic synthetic phonics programme.

We begin in Reception with an exploration and recap of some of Phase 1 phonics, which concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work that starts in Phase 2 and progresses to Phase 4. 

The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects. Each aspect contains three strands: Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination), Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) and Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension). 

In Year 1, pupils will build upon the phonics foundation laid in Reception by exploring alternatives to the digraphs and trigraphs introduced earlier as they progress into Phase 5 and Phase 6.

Bug Club Phonics teaches a new grapheme and related phoneme, or alternative spellings to previously taught phonemes, in every Phoneme Session. Each unit concludes with a Language Session, which includes the teaching of associated irregular words. This fast pace, backed up by daily revision of past teaching, has proved the most effective and successful method of phonic training. 

The order of grapheme introduction ensures that children start reading and spelling a wide range of words at the earliest possible stage. Teachers plan for the progression of phonics teaching, ensuring that it is matched to children's needs. As soon as each set of letters is introduced, children will be encouraged to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words. For example, they will learn to blend the sounds s-a-t to make the word sat. They will also start learning to segment words. For example, they might be asked to find the letter sounds that make the word tap from a small selection of magnetic letters. In addition to daily teaching sessions, children are given regular opportunities to practice sounding and blending words in a meaningful context. 

To support your child's phonics learning at home, increase their chances of progression and success, and enhance their confidence in and enjoyment of learning to read, we recommend that you regularly access Bug Club Phonics eBooks and Games via your child's ActiveLearn account. 

For further information, the video below explains the basics of phonics and provides practical guidance to help your child learn to read at home:

All you need to know about phonics - Bug Club Phonics Video

For further support regarding the correct pronunciation of each sound and the corresponding Bug Club action for the sound, please click on the pictures below: