For the Love of Literacy – Bridgette McCann

Did you know that Sounds Write is the spelling program we use at St Michael’s? It is a highly structured, cumulative, sequential, explicit and code-oriented instructional programme for teaching all children to read and spell.

Sounds-Write provides the classroom practitioner with rigorous training in how to teach reading and spelling from the moment children begin their schooling in the Foundation Stage, throughout Key Stage 1 and into Key Stage 2. In addition, the programme also provides a highly successful intervention for Classroom Support Teachers working at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education.

Sounds-Write’s instructional method works effectively because it:

• can be easily implemented in the classroom with the minimum of planning and preparation
• provides clearly structured, easy-to-follow lesson plans
• is developmentally appropriate for beginning readers in YR, Y1 and Y2
• offers fast and highly effective intervention for children at all levels who have fallen behind in their reading and spelling
• is a real phonic programme that teaches in simple steps how the sounds of the language are represented by the writing system
• places emphasis on giving practice that is grounded in physical, concrete experience of the ideas and conceptual understanding the pupils need to assimilate
• teaches the three essential skills of segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation necessary for reading and spelling throughout the programme on a daily basis until all pupils achieve the
• automaticity that underlies the fluency of every successful reader.