Faith and Phonics

At SSMJ our faith is at the centre of all we do and this is evident through our Phonics too. Our core Gospel Values are golden threads throughout all our teaching and learning. We approach every area of the curriculum with this in mind. This includes Phonics.

We are dedicated to developing a love of reading in its many forms, in our pupils and this starts with our Phonics teaching. We carefully selected our Phonics Scheme - Red Rose Letters and Sounds to ensure this would support our high quality Phonics teaching within school.

The ability to read is a key foundation stone for children to begin to access stories about our faith independently and therefore is given high priority within school. Our faith of course, goes beyond teaching children to read it can be seen in our teaching approach to Phonics where staff model that important Catholic ethos of things like listening, sharing, caring for our peers. It's in everything we do. 

This approach helps to expand our pupils' social, moral, spiritual and cultural development. Our Reading curriculum not only develops our pupils educationally, but we plan in experiences to develop our children's cultural capital such as special events like World Book Day, fun events and challenges dedicated to this subject.

We share our love of teaching phonics with parents to ensure children have as much support as possible and reach those important goals.