In our Key Skills group, we often work on building phonological awareness (an essential foundation block for successful phonics learning). We work on sounds in words without using any print - this is because the print can cause confusion, particularly if you have only ever known letters by the sounds they make and not their name. Once sounds can be heard, processed and manipulated we bring in the print and look at the letters that code for each sound before starting to develop spelling patterns and rules. Today we were investigating the vowel ‘i’ and listening for the long and short sounds within the words. This is important as so many spelling patterns are determined by long and short vowel sounds, such as whether to double a consonant for adding -ed or if the /k/ sound at the end of a word is spelled ‘k’ or ‘ck’. Please get in touch about our groups - we have spaces in the Tuesday Key Skills and Thursday Advanced Skills groups. You can contact us here: https://newwayslearningcentre.com/contact.php