ELS is a Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme (SSP) which is designed to teach children how to read through the act of decoding and blending.

An SSP teaches children the link between the sounds of our language (phonemes) and the written representation of these sounds (graphemes), or the spellings of the sounds contained within the English language. Essential Letters and Sounds is a complete Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme (SSP).

We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs ‘sh’ (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).

We teach children to:

• Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently

• Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.

The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.

• Is delivered to the whole class
• Combines continuous and reactive assessment via an assessment tracker
• Provides robust intervention
• Is rigorous and engaging
• Supports teachers to ensure the lowest attaining children keep up rather than catch up

ELS was validated by the Department for Education in the June 2021 validation window.

“Validation will indicate that a programme has been self-assessed by its publisher and assessed by a small panel with relevant expertise, and that both consider it to meet all of the most recent Department for Education (DfE) criteria for an effective systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme.”

(Department for Education, 2021)