The children have free access to books and children begin to take part in guided reading sessions. Children have access to a range of writing opportunities to develop their early writing skills.

Daily phonic sessions take place in both Nursery and Reception.

At the Rosary we teach phonics through Sound! Start Phonics for Letters and Sounds. 

This programme aims to develop children's speaking and listening skills as well as preparing children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. The programme is broken down to teach sounds in a certain order, these are known as phases. 

Phase One (Nursery/Reception) 

In this phase there are seven different aspects, known as environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting. Phase 1 concentrates on developing the children's speaking and listening skills. 

Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeks. 

In phase two children learn 19 letters of the alphabet and a sound for each. The children are taught a set of letters and their sounds each week.

Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeks. 

Phase three focuses on the remaining 7 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. 

Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeks. 

In phase four, correspondences are taught and no new grapheme-phonemes are added. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants e.g. swim, clap, jump. 

For information about Phases Five - Six and definitions of the Phonics terms - please see the English Curriculum page.