Sounds-Write

Sounds-Write at Sydenham Primary School

At our school, we are committed to providing students with strong foundations in literacy. From Prep to Grade 3, we implement Sounds-Write, a highly effective, evidence-based phonics program that supports students to become confident readers and writers.

Sounds-Write is delivered daily for 30 minutes and follows a systematic synthetic phonics approach, in line with the Victorian Department of Education’s guidance on explicit phonics instruction. This ensures that all students are taught the essential skills needed to decode (read) and encode (spell) words in a clear, structured and consistent way.

What is Sounds-Write?

Sounds-Write is a carefully sequenced program that teaches children how the English writing system works. Students learn to:

• Identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words
• Link sounds to letters or groups of letters (graphemes)
• Blend sounds together to read words
• Segment words into sounds to support spelling
• Read and write words, sentences and connected text with increasing fluency

Lessons are explicit, interactive and engaging, with plenty of opportunities for students to practise and apply their skills. The program builds progressively, ensuring that students develop accuracy, confidence and automaticity over time.

Why Sounds-Write?

Research shows that systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective way to teach early reading. Sounds-Write:

• Provides a clear, structured progression of learning
• Supports all learners, including those who may need additional support
• Builds strong decoding and spelling skills
• Helps students become independent and successful readers

How Families Can Support at Home

Families play a vital role in supporting their child’s reading development. Here are some simple and effective ways to help at home:

• Read regularly together – Encourage your child to read decodable books and revisit familiar texts to build confidence and fluency.
• Practise sounds and words – Ask your child to say the sounds in words and blend them together (e.g. /c/ /a/ /t/ → cat).
• Support spelling – Encourage your child to “sound out” words when writing, rather than guessing.
• Keep it positive – Celebrate effort and progress, and keep reading experiences enjoyable.
• Stay connected – Speak with your child’s teacher if you would like more information or strategies to support learning at home.
• Access the Sounds-Write Portal – Parents can access the Sounds-Write portal for training, resources and readings. We encourage all families to explore this to better understand how the program works and how to support learning at home. https://sounds-write.co.uk/support-for-parents-and-carers/

By working together, we can ensure every child develops the strong literacy skills they need for future success.