Eastgate Academy Phonics Curriculum

Kerensa Healy

Phonics is a key skill that supports the development of early reading skills. At Eastgate Academy, we combine quality phonic teaching and the promotion of reading for pleasure to provide our pupils with the skills they need to have a successful start to their lives as readers and writers.

Phonics is the beginning of a children’s body of knowledge, skills and understanding that are an essential part of learning to read and write. In order to read and understand texts, children must learn to recognise/decode the words on the page. Good quality phonic teaching secures the skills of word recognition and decoding which allow children to read fluently. These phonic skills need to be taught systematically. Children need to acquire secure and automatic decoding skills and progress from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ for purpose and pleasure.