Literacy is Tremendous!
5 Sessions a week
• Reading.
• Writing.
• Speaking and Listening.
Each Literacy unit lasts 2-3 weeks and focuses
on a text type, e.g. poetry, narrative or nonfiction.
“Education is not filling a
bucket but lighting a fire”
W.B. Yeats
An Enriched Curriculum!
Ask them to suspend
disbelief and step into a
whole new world….
We don’t believe in lids…
…we believe in challenge!
All our Literacy sessions are taught in a challenging and
open ended way so that pupils always have the opportunity
to exceed expectations.
What is phonics?
We teach these two main skills…
Term
Meaning
To segment
To split a word into its separate
sounds, as an aid to spelling.
To list the sounds within a word and
put together quickly to form the
word. (Taught as a strategy for
reading unknown words.)
To blend
b – oa - t
Virginia Bridge / Phonics glossary / August 2000
And the knowledge of the graphemes
and phonemes
Term
Meaning
Examples
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound that you
can hear within a word. The word
phoneme refers to the sound , NOT
the letter(s) which represent the
sound in writing.
c/a/t = 3 phonemes
th/e/n = 3 phonemes
ch/air = 2 phonemes
w/e/n/t = 4 phonemes
Grapheme
The written representation of a
phoneme.
c/a/t = 3 graphemes
th/e/n = 3 graphemes
ch/air = 2 graphemes
w/e/n/t = 4 graphemes
A phoneme you hear
and a grapheme you see
A word always has the same number of phonemes as graphemes.
At a glance, phonics is….
Skills of oral and
written blending and
segmenting.
Knowledge of the
graphemes and
phonemes.
•And tricky words of course! E.g. the, because.
•Not all of the ‘key’ words are tricky. Some are phonetic e.g.
back, get. These still need to be recognised on sight as they
are ‘high frequency words’.
•These are the basic skills needed for reading and writing.
because
Sounds of English
• 44 sounds or ‘phonemes’
• Pure sounds ‘mmm’ not ‘muh’.
No schwaring please!!
• mst instead of must.
The school website has a video that
demonstrates the correct articulation of all these
phonemes.
Jolly Phonics and Letters and Sounds
Phase 1
Oral blending and segmenting: Hearing and
saying sounds in words before learning to read
and write them.
Phase 2
Phase 3 – Digraphs (Phonemes or graphemes made up of two or
more letters)
Phase 4
• Initial and final consonant clusters, e.g.
free or went.
Phase 5
•Alternative spellings and pronounciations of
previously learnt phonemes and graphemes. For
example there are only 44 phonemes in the
English Language but there are over 100 different
ways to spell them.
To make it a bit clearer for you…..!
/ai/
/ee/
/ie/
pain, day, gate, station
sweet, heat, thief,
these
tried, light, my, shine,
mind
/oa/
road, blow, bone, cold
/oo/
moon, blue, grew,
tune
The length of the word doesn’t necessarily dictate it’s difficulty, e.g. children may learn
to spell a word like ‘chimpanzee’ before they learn a word like ‘thief’.
Phase Six
• Past tense, adding suffixes, e.g. ‘ly’, ‘ful’
‘ness’ and spelling of more complex
words.
Year 3 Onwards: Support for Spelling
Children need the opportunity to apply their
phonic knowledge independently.
Encourage children to
‘split’ the syllables in
polysyllabic words.
Mistakes
aren’t a
problem,
they’re a
challenge!
Self assessment is key!
Bear this in mind when supporting children with home learning. Copying doesn’t help!
As children progress through Phase 5
onwards we ask them to apply their
knowledge of alternative graphemes.
Try writing it different ways.
Which way do you think looks right?
norty
nawty
nauty
naughty
In Year 3, we continue to teach children
to use the spelling patterns they are
learning.
E.g. we have learnt when a word has a ‘y’ on the end, the plural usually changes
it to ‘ies’ so how do you think we will write the plural for army?
Other spelling tips
•i before e except after c
•There is ‘a rat’ in separate
•Mix up desert and dessert? With dessert you like seconds so there
is a second ‘s’!
•Wednesday (say the ‘nes’!)
•Acronyms! B- Big, E- elephants, C-can’t, A – always, U-use, Ssmall, E-exits = BECAUSE!
Captain
Connective
links longer
sentences
together!
Sergeant
Sabotage is
out to spoil
your sentence!
The Incredible
Opener starts
every
sentence with
some oomph!
VCOP
and
Big
Write
Doctor
Punctuation
makes sure
every sentence
packs a punch!
Violet
Vocabulary
has a wow
word for
every
occasion.
Progression
Activity!
WALT: understand the importance of developing vocabulary.
•
Listen to the audio clip from ‘The Twits’. Write down any ‘wow words’ (any
appropriate descriptive language, e.g. adjectives, adverbs, technical
vocabulary, etc) that you hear. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YHaWzGBVEc&feature=relmfu
WILF:
Must: Write down any wow words you hear.
Should: Think about why they are appropriate wow words.
Could: Write down any connectives or openers you hear
too!
Talk for Writing
Getting children to verbalise and discuss what they
want to write before they write, makes a huge
difference.
If they can’t say it, they can’t write it!
Peer/Self Assessment
2b
2b
• Punctuation more accurate.
• Less phonetic
• Words used more for effect.
1b
• Beginning to use paragraphs.
• Speech marks.
• More sophisticate vocabulary.
• Spelling largely accurate.
• Use of a range of connectives and openers.
A more detailed break down of the levels for reading and writing as well as your child’s
individual level and target will be shared at parent’s evening.
Guided Reading
An opportunity to….
• Assess the children.
• Develop their technical reading skills.
• Develop their comprehension skills.
See the school website (on handout) for an
example of this.
Reading Tips
• Sound buttons, e.g coat
• Split digraphs (e.g. bike, rode)
• The phonics screening test and the
importance of nonsense words
• Use the ‘pause, prompt, praise’ flowchart to
develop independent reading skills
• Use comprehension questions to develop
your child’s contextual understanding of a
text
• Join the library!
Handwriting
Let’s hear it for the boys!
The gender gap is narrowing but there is still a lot to do….
• Outdoor writing – clipboards are great! Write a football commentary!
• Comics.
• ICT! (see handout for websites).
• Toy Story pens and pencils.
• Treasure hunts!
• Shopping lists, letters, posters, labels – children love writing for a
purpose!
• Silly sentences.
• Kung Fu Punctuation.
• Calling all Dads, uncles, big brothers etc! Your school needs you!