We use Letters & Sounds as our Phonics program for Literacy at Maddington ESC. Letters & Sounds is an evidenced based program that aims to build students’ speaking and listening skills before preparing them to learn to read and spell. They are supported to develop the skills of blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

Traditionally, students were taught letter names like A, B, C from the start. However, letter names don’t always represent the sounds and this might confuse students when they try to pronounce words made up of these letters.

The phonic approach encourages students to directly link letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes), and to teach students pure sounds like ah, b, k when encountering the alphabet. So, students learn how to put sounds represented by letters or letter groups (like ch or igh) together to read words in a more straightforward way.

Letters & Sounds progresses through all sounds, working from the simple to the more complex. By following the progression, students build on their growing phonic knowledge, learning to read and spell, and having fun along the way.