Early reading is taught through phonics, at Mount Pleasant Infants we use ‘Pip and Pap Phonics’ this is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme.

What is phonics:

• How sounds are represented by written letters. For example, children will be taught that the letter (grapheme)  ‘m’ represents an ‘mmm ‘ sound (phoneme).
• How sounds can be blended together to make words. For example, they will be taught that the sounds of the letters ‘c-a-t’ blend together to make the word ‘cat’.

Phonics is taught in phases:

Orange, Pink , Green and Purple Phase. In Year 1 children complete the phonic screening check in the summer term, by this stage they will be working within Green phase. Children who do not pass the phonics screening check in Year 1 will have another opportunity to do so in Year 2.

Cued Articulation

At Mount Pleasant Schools ‘cued articulation’ is used to support with the teaching and learning of phonics and early reading.

Cued articulation is a set of hand signs that can help children with their sounds. There is one hand sign for each speech sound. The signs give clues about where the sounds are made, each hand movement represents one sound and the cue gives clues as to how and where  the sound is produced.