In the Foundation Stage and Year 1 children are taught Letters and Sounds phonics. The Rising Stars decodable reading scheme is used to develop early reading skills. 

As children move into Year 2 the Babcock Spelling approach is adopted. The flexability of the phonics teaching within the school is such that children can access the phonics phase they require according to individual ability.

In Key Stage 2 (Years 3, 4, 5 and 6) the Babcock Spelling approach continues to be followed enabling children to learn different spelling rules.

Foundation Stage 1 children (part-time) are taught phase one:
Phase One activities are arranged under the following seven aspects.
Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds
Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds
Aspect 3: General sound discrimination – body percussion
Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme
Aspect 5: Alliteration
Aspect 6: Voice sounds
Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting

Foundation Stage 2 children (full-time) are taught phase two:
The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. By the end of the phase many children should be able to read some VC and CVC words and to spell them either using magnetic letters or by writing the letters on paper or on whiteboards. During the phase they will be introduced to reading two-syllable words and simple captions. They will also learn to read some high-frequency ‘tricky’ words:

Phase 3:
The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme. Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. They will learn letter names during this phase, learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words.

Phase 4: 
The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.

Phase 5:
The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant. Some of the alternatives will already have been encountered in the high-frequency words that have been taught. Children become quicker at recognising graphemes of more than one letter in words and at blending the phonemes they represent. When spelling words they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.

Year 2:
At this stage many children will be reading longer and less familiar texts independently and with increasing fluency. The shift from learning to read to reading to learn takes place and children read for information and for pleasure. As children find that they can decode words quickly and independently, they will read more and more so that the number of words they can read automatically builds up. There is a list of the 300 high-frequency words to learn. Increasing the pace of reading is an important objective. Children should be encouraged to read aloud as well as silently for themselves.
Objectives for Year 2:
To secure the reading and spelling of words containing different spellings for phonemes To understand and begin to learn the conventions for adding the suffix -ed for past tense and -ing for present tense
To split compound words into their component parts and use this knowledge to support spelling
To learn how to add common suffixes to words
To add common prefixes to root words and to understand how they change meaning
To discriminate syllables in multisyllabic words as an aid to spelling

Year 3:
Objectives for Year 3:
To consolidate knowledge of adding suffixes and to investigate the conventions related to the spelling pattern -le
To spell regular verb endings and to learn irregular tense changes (e.g. go/went)
To know what happens to the spelling of nouns when s is added
To understand how words change when the suffixes are added
To embed the correct use and spelling of pronouns
To develop knowledge of prefixes to generate new words from root words

Year 4:
0bjectives for Year 4:
To distinguish between the spelling and meaning of homophones
To investigate, collect and classify spelling patterns related to the formation of plurals
To investigate and learn to spell words with common letter strings
To understand how suffixes change the function of words
To understand the use of the apostrophe in contracted forms of words
To revise and investigate links between meaning and spelling when using affixes

Year 5:
Objectives for Year 5:
To spell unstressed vowels in polysyllabic words
To spell words with common letter strings and different pronunciations
To explore the spelling patterns of consonants and to formulate rules
To explore less common prefixes and suffixes
To investigate and learn spelling rules for adding suffixes to words ending in e or words ending in -y and words containing ie
To identify word roots, derivations and spelling patterns as a support for spelling

Year 6:
Objectives for Year 6:
To embed the use of independent spelling strategies for spelling unfamiliar words
To investigate the meaning and spelling of connectives (e.g. furthermore, nevertheless)
To revise and extend work on spelling patterns, including unstressed vowels in polysyllabic words
To use what is known about prefixes and suffixes to transform words
To spell unfamiliar words by using what is known of word families and spelling patterns To revise and use word roots, prefixes and suffixes as a support for spelling