Phonics
Phonics at SMFR
At SMFR we use the FFT: Success for All Phonics scheme.
What is FFT Success for All Phonics?
FFT Success for All Phonics is a complete systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme that has been validated by the Department for Education.
Children will take part in a daily Phonics session. These sessions will start as 15 minutes in Reception and increase to 25 minutes for the end of Reception and Year 1.
Children will also take part in a daily Reading session, increasing from 15 minutes to 30 minutes by the end of Reception and for Year 1.
Reading sessions will help consolidate the learning from the Phonics sessions as well as develop fluent reading and comprehension skills.
What is phonics and how can I help at home?
What is Phonics?
Phonics is one method of teaching children how to read and write.
It's all about sounds. There are 44 sounds in the English language, which we put together to form words.
Some are represented by one letter, like 't', and some by two or more, like 'ck' in duck and 'air' in chair.
Synthetic phonics refers to 'synthesizing', or blending, the sounds to read words. It's based on the idea that children should sound out unknown words and not rely on their context.
What can I do to help?
Parents helping their child learn to read with phonics often ask why it uses letter sounds and not names?
Letter names don't always sound the same as the actual sounds.
For instance, the letter name for B is pronounced with a long E sound after the letter sound: we say 'bee', but that's not the same as the letter sound.
There is a Parent Portal for our scheme with helpful videos and tips on how to support pronunciation of letter sounds. The link can be found below: