Ages 5-7 (KS1)

Reading

To avoid confusing your child, our tutors do not introduce a new or random phonics method. Instead, they find out which Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) scheme the child’s school uses (e.g., Read Write Inc., Little Wandle, or Rocket Phonics).

• Matching Terminology: Tutors mirror the school’s vocabulary, consistently using terms the child knows, like digraph, trigraph, split-digraph, blending, and segmenting.
• Magnetic Tiles and Sound Buttons: Tutors have children physically manipulate letter tiles to build words, physically pushing “sound buttons” (dots under single letters and lines under digraphs like sh) to visually map the word’s structure.
• Rapid-Fire Flashcards: Tutors utilise “error-correction” techniques during flashcard drills. If a child misidentifies a sound, the tutor immediately models the correct sound, has the child repeat it three times, and laces that card back into the pack to be reviewed again moments later.
• Tutors provide intense scaffolding to help children tackle both decodable words and exception words (“tricky words” or “red words” like said, what, people).
• We also work on other reading skills which focus on comprehension and inference skills, teaching the specific skills that children need to read beyond decoding.