Mark Cross Church of England Primary School

The national curriculum is designed to make sure that all children are able to read and write fluently by the time they leave year 6, so that they can make progress at secondary school. A vital element of this is the early and successful teaching of phonics. Understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words underpins successful word reading. Children’s knowledge of the English alphabetic code – how letters or groups of letters represent the sounds of the language – supports their reading and spelling.

In 2021, The Department for Education published guidance on the core criteria needed for effective systematic synthetic phonics teaching programmes and launched a new process to validate schemes which could be used by primary schools. Each school then investigated these schemes to choose the right one for them and their cohort of pupils.

The Weald Federation chose Twinkl Phonics. We felt that it contained everything we needed to deliver phonics to children from the very beginning of learning to read and write to full fluency.

To find out more about the way in which we teach phonics (and how you can help to support your children at home) please watch the video below.