Phonics & Reading

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EYFS Parents & Children Reading Together Sessions 2025-2026

• Friday 14th November 2025

• Friday 23rd January 2026

• Friday 13th March 2026

• Friday 24th April 2026

• Friday 12th June 2026

These take place at 2.30pm in school. Please come to the main school reception and staff will meet you there and bring you through to the classes. Come armed with a book (or two). If you are unable to come, you are more than welcome to send a grandparent or other family member in your place.

Literacy in Reception & Beyond

Friday 10th October 2025 at 2.15pm

Come along to find out how we teach children to read and write at St Anne's. You will be introduced to the Twinkl Phonics Scheme (DfE approved) and other strategies you can use at home to support your child in learning these basic skills.

Literacy in Reception & Beyond at St Anne's Workshop

Phonics in Reception

At St Anne's, we follow the DfE approved Twinkl Scheme for the teaching of Phonics. This suggests 6 key levels starting at Nursery and moving through to Year 2. Children from St Anne's Nursery will have accessed Level 1 which focuses on learning key listening skills and differentiating between a variety of environmental sounds and sounds in words. 

In Reception, children will initially review Level 1 and quickly move through Level 2, Level 3 & Level 4.

In Level 2 children will learn some initial letter sounds and will learn to segment and blend to read and write 3 letter regular words. Children will use their "Robot Rick Fingers" to segment and blend words. They will also learn some "Tricky Words" - those that cannot be sounded out and need to be read on sight. The correct letter formations are also key at this stage.

In Level 3 children will learn the final initial letter sounds and will be taught some digraph and trigraph sounds. By the end of Level 3, children should know a grapheme for all the sounds used in English. The words will begin to get longer and children will learn how to break up the words and blend them back together to read.

Towards the end of the year in Level 4, no new sounds are learned. However, the children are taught consonant clusters when reading and writing. This should prepare children well for the challenges of Year 1 and Level 5 where they will learn alternative digraphs and begin to work on grammar rules and spelling patterns.

Parent and Carers Guide to Pronouncing Phonemes

Watch this video to find out how to pronounce the sounds.

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Parent and Carers Guide to Tricky Words

This quick guide for parents and carers explains what tricky words are, why they are tricky for children to read and spell and why it is important to teach them.

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What is Blending in Phonics?

In this video, Twinkl Teacher Leanne explains what the term "blending" is in phonics teaching. Both good and bad examples of teaching blending are given along with information about different accents used to teach phonics effectively. Blending in phonics is a key skill in early reading and it simply means to merge push or blend sounds together to make a word. This video explains how to get your child reading by blending the sounds in words together. At St Anne's we also Robot Talk like Robot Rick, use our 'Robot Rick Fingers' and initially use sound buttons under each individual phoneme (like the video) or a digraph line under the digraphs or trigraphs on the flash cards. Please see the handout from the Literacy Parent Workshop for more information or talk to me for more advice.