Phonics in Year 1
Julie Phillippo
Bracknell Forest
Family Learning Team
You will learn:
• How to use phonics to blend and
segment a word
• What children will be learning in year 1
phonics lessons
• What you can do at home to support
their learning in fun ways
Phonics – a few things you
should know…
• Phonics is about linking the sounds of spoken
language to written letters (graphemes)
• A phoneme is a unit of sound
• Spoken English is divided into about 42
phonemes.
• Phonics schemes are based on these 42
phonemes.
Segmenting the sounds
• In order to spell, children must learn to
hear the sounds within words.
• I want to write about a
• I must hear the word in my head and
split it up into individual sounds.
In order to read, children need
to learn to blend the sounds
together they see on the page.
d - r - e - ss
CD Rom phase 2 blending for reading clip
Pure sounds – no shcwa
Use the arm
Letters and Sounds – Reception
• 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
• Set 6: j
v
w
x(ks)
• Set 7: y
z,zz
qu(kw)
•
Phases 2- 3
ss
Some sounds are represented
by more than 1 grapheme
ship
sh . i . p
Digraphs
• Some sounds are represented by two
letters. These are called digraphs.
• e.g. sh, ch, ng, oo
• And some need 3 letters:
• igh, ear, ure
Trigraphs
Digraphs and Trigraphs
ch - chip
sh - shop
th – thin/then
ure - sure
ai – rain
ng - sing
igh - night
oo – book, spoon
Phase 3
ar - farm
or – for
ur - hurt
ow - cow
ee - feet
oi - coin
air - fair
er - corner
Phoneme frame
• Segment the word.
• Write one phoneme in each square.
• fish
f-i-sh
• wing
w-i-ng
Letters and Sounds
• A phonics scheme divided into 5 phases.
• Phases 2-4 covered in reception (though
children will still need to recap what
they learnt in reception and build upon
it.)
• Phase 5 covered in year 1
• Phase 6 covered in year 2
Phase 4 (taught towards the end
of reception)
• Blend and segment adjacent consonants
frog
eg clock, train, fresh
f–r–o–g
Phase 5 – year 1
• Alternative spellings for some of the
phonemes they have already met in
earlier phases.
Challenge: write a list of as many words as
possible that have an ‘ai’ sound in them; as
in
They don’t have
to be spelt with ai
Font size 28
Alternative spellings for the ai
sound
-ay tray
a-e
cake
-eigh eight
a angel
-ey grey
-ae sundae
ea break
Split Digraph
a-e
e-e
i-e
o-e
u-e
came
made
make
these
Pete
Steve
like
time
pine
bone
pole
home
June
huge
rude
take
game
race
even
scene
extreme
ripe
shine
nice
alone
those
stone
rule
tube
use
Year 1 Phonics Screening Test
• An assessment of the child’s ability to decode
words using phonics.
• The aim is to pick up any children who are
struggling with phonics, so that they can be
given extra support.
• All schools must set the test in a specified
week in June. (End of year 1)
• It takes 4-8 minutes.
• Children are asked to read a list of 40 words –
some are real words and some are non-words.
Games and activities to play at
home
• Play with magnetic lower case letters – write
a simple sentence or a word for your child to
find on the fridge!
• Use post-it notes or a white board to write on
• Have fun with writing words in shaving foam
on the bath tiles
• Hide some letters around the garden or house
– can your child collect the right letters to
make a 3 or 4 letter word? (stop, spot, frog, green, track,
spin, flag, wind, lamp, nest, sink, hunt, bank, toast, chimp, thank, spoon)
• For children who like trains or cars –
blutac some letters onto toy vehicles;
can they ‘park’ them so that they spell a
word?
• Cut up a word from your child’s spelling
list – can they put it back together
again?
• Play Full Circle Use magnetic letters to
make a word. Change one letter each
time to make a new word until you get
back to the original e.g. park-part-tartdart-dark-park-full circle!
Online Games and Activities
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsand
pictures/longvow/index.shtml
• Some lovely games to practise long-vowel
sounds, CVC words and adjacent
consonants. Activities to print out as
well as online games.
• http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/forhome/reading-site/fun-ideas/age-5-6--2
• Age appropriate activities – not just
phonics.
• http://www.ictgames.com/blendingBingo
_LS.html
• If you have a printer, you can print off
bingo cards with words on them. Then
play with the online bingo game. Good
for practising blending.
• http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/BuriedTre
asure2.html
• Read the words and sort them into real
and nonsense words. Based on a pirate
theme.
http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/literacy/lett
ers-and-sounds/
Activites and games to print out linked
to the different phases of the Letters
and Sounds scheme.