Phonics and
Reading Parents
Information
Meeting
The English
Language
26 letters of the alphabet
44 sounds
140 ways to spell these sounds
The Alphabetic Code
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound
in a word.
There are 44 phonemes that
we teach.
The 44 phonemes
/b/
/d/
/f/
/g/
/h/
/j/
/k/
/l/
/m/
/n/
/ng/
/p/
/r/
/s/
/t/
/v/
/w/
/y/
/z/
/th/
/th/
/ch/
/sh/ /zh/ /a/
/e/
/i/
/o/
/u/
/ae/ /ee/ /ie/
/oe/
/ue/ /oo/ /ar/ /ur/ /au/ /er/ /ow/ /oi/
/air/ /ear/ /ure/
Grapheme
• Letters representing a phoneme
• A grapheme may consist of one (t), two (ch),
or more letters (igh).
• A phoneme can be represented in more
than one way: cat, kennel, choir
• The same grapheme may represent more
than one phoneme: circus, car, me, met
Blending
• Children need to be able to hear the
separate sounds in a word and then
blend them together to say the
whole word .
c / a / t
sh / ee / p
cat
sheep
Segmenting
Chopping up a word to spell it out
How many phonemes in these
words?
dog
light
speech
dog = 3 - d / o / g
light = 3 - l / igh / t
speech = 4 - s / p / ee /
ch
Other Terminology
 Digraph (2 letters 1 sound)
 Consonant digraph (sh, ch, ck, th, ll, ss)
 Vowel digraph (at least 1 vowel – ee,
ai, ar, er)
 Trigraph (3 letters 1 sound igh, dge,)
 Split digraph/sometimes magic e but
we teach correct terminology (bike,
came, rose)
High Frequency Words/ Tricky Words
 There are 100 high frequency words in Phases 1-
5. There are 200 common words.
 High frequency words become decodable as
children develop their phonic knowledge e.g.
‘dad’ in Phase 2.
 Tricky words are words children need to learn
that will help them read more fluently e.g. was,
the, people.
At Shaw-cum-Donnington
we use
Letters and Sounds
as our main phonics
scheme and we
supplement this with
other resources.
There are 6 Phases
taught through
Early Years and Key Stage One
Phase 1
•Environmental sounds
•Instrumental sounds
•Body percussion
•Rhythm and Rhyme
•Alliteration
•Voice sounds
•Oral blending and segmenting
Phase
2
Introduces letter sound
correspondences
Set 1: s a t p
Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k
Set 4: ck e u r
Set 5: h b f ff l ll ss
Blend and segment vc, cv, cvc words
Read high frequency words:
is it in at and to the no go I
Phase 3
 Set 6: j v w x
 Set 7: y z zz qu
 Set 8: ch sh th ng
Also: ai ee igh oa oo ar or
ur ow oi ear air ure er
Phase 3 - continued
Read high frequency words
he she we me be was my you they her all are
Spell no go the to I
Read and spell 2 syllable words
and captions
Letter names
Phase 4
Blending and segmenting
adjacent consonants for reading
and writing
 2 syllable words: lunchbox,
desktop etc.
cvc, ccvc, cvcc words
Phase 5
 Further graphemes for reading
ay ou ie ea oy ir ue aw wh ph ew
oe au a-e i-e e-e o-e u-e
 Alternative pronunciations for graphemes (fin,
find cow, blow)
 High frequency words (read and spell)
 Alternative spellings for phonemes ( sh tion ss
cion ch)
 Read and spell 2 syllable and 3 syllable words
 Writing and reading sentences
Phase 6
Spelling focus
 Past tense (ed)
 Suffixes (s es ing ed er est ful ly y ment ness)
 Prefixes
 Plurals
 Spelling long words
 Finding and learning the difficult bits in words
 Learning and practising spellings (syllables,
base words, analogy, mnemonics)
 Application of spelling in writing
Reading
at school
and home
Reading
• Success in reading is fundamental to success in
school.
• Reading is all about acquiring meaning; for
enjoyment, information and understanding.
• It is not a performance.
• It is not a test.
Every time you finish a book - do always choose a
harder one next time?
Understanding
(Comprehension)
• Being able to read does not mean you understand what
you read.
• Your child might sound like a good reader but may not
necessarily understand what the text means.
• The best way to develop understanding is to talk about
texts.
• The next slide is easy to read – does anyone
understand what it means?
An extract taken from a computer manual
According to the previous ATA/IDE hard drive transfer
protocol, the signalling way to send data was in
synchronous strobe mode by using the rising edge of
the strobe signal. The faster strobe rate increases
EMI, which cannot be eliminated by the standard 40pin cable used by ATA and ultra ATA.
Reading requires two skills
Phonics and Word
Recognition
The ability to
recognise words
presented in and
out of context.
The ability to blend
letter sounds
(phonemes)
together to read
words.
Understanding
The ability to
understand the meaning
of the words and
sentences in a text.
The ability to
understand the ideas,
information and themes
in a text.
If a child understands
what they hear, they will
understand the same
information when they
Reading in School The Teaching of Reading
•
•
•
•
•
•
Phonics – daily
Shared reading (being read a story) - daily
Guided reading – once a week KS1
Independent reading - daily
Reading across the curriculum – daily
1:1 reading with an adult (teacher/teaching
assistant/parent helper) – as often as possible
The hearing of reading is NOT the teaching of reading
Home reading books and records
 Books are set in book bands
 In each band there are different sets of books – some
more difficult than others.
 In each band our books are organised so they get
progressively more difficult. This could be because of
type (fiction/ non-fiction) or use of high frequency words
(words that can’t be sounded out).
 When they move book bands the first ones are usually
easier to read.
 The children only move a book band when listened to by
a teacher.
What to do if your child is stuck
 Use phonics first. What sound does the word begin




with? Can you say the sounds in the word? Blend them
together.
Read to the end of the sentence. What would make
sense?
What is the text about – what might fit here?
Does it sound right?
Look at the picture. Does it help?
Home reading records
• Please sign to say when you have listened to them read.
We also initial books when any adult in school has
listened to them.
• Comments we find helpful –
We took it in turn to read, good expression, we discussed
what might happen next, we looked for capital letters and
full stops, clear reading, could tell me the meaning of
difficult word.
‘My child read this book easily’
 Sometimes we try not to move children on
too quickly
- To boost their confidence in reading
- Reluctant readers at home
- Can read the book fluently but they do not
understand all the vocabulary
Changing reading books
• In Class 4 (Reception) – when they have read to a
teacher or teaching assistant.
• In Class 3 (KS1) – when they have read to an adult
at home and sometimes if they have read in school
• Children will ideally read each book twice with the
earlier book bands.
• Teachers or teaching assistants can only change
books – ideally this is 2 or 3 times a week.
Reading at Home – enjoy!
 Make reading visible; have books available in your
home.
 Share books every day.
 Boys need to see that reading is something men do.
 Talk about books.
 Sit and listen - don’t do chores around the reader!
 Respect choices.
Reading to your children
• Introduce your children to different types of books;
•
•
•
•
classic fiction, chapter books, short stories, joke books,
poetry, non-fiction.
Read them the book that was your favourite when you
were a child.
Read slowly, with expression. Try to use different and
funny voices for characters.
Follow the words and read the story using the pictures.
Talk about what is happening and what might happen
next. Leave the story on a cliffhanger!
Useful sites
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/alphabloc
ks/
https://content.espresso.co.uk/openhive
http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/