Letters and Sounds
Workshop for parents – September
2012
abcdefghIjklmnopqrstuvw
x y z qu ch sh th ue ng ai ee
ie oa oo ar or er ou oi ear air ure
What is Letters and Sounds?
Letters and Sounds is the way we teach
phonics skills at Walter Evans as
recommended by the Rose Report - a
government report on the teaching and
learning of children in primary. All children
have a daily 15-20 minutes session of
phonics teaching to enable them to learn
to read and spell words for themselves. It
is a six phase programme.
We begin teaching Letters and Sounds in nursery (FS1) –
Phase 1. This may involves joining in with rhymes, songs,
stories by clapping, stamping etc. Over time, children
develop an understanding that words are made up of
different sounds (phonemes) and they learn to hear
different sounds. Gradually, they will learn to match sounds
to letters (graphemes). This is phonic knowledge – they use
this when they are reading and writing.
In phase 2 and 3 (FS2) children learn to blend and segment
different sounds. They learn the letter name and the sound
it makes and its formation.
By the time they are in year 1 and 2, the children are
expected to know by heart all the 44 phonemes (sounds) and
to spell them with increasing accuracy. (phases 4-6)
Some examples:
Phonics is…..
Identifying phonemes as the smallest unit
of sound in a word, being able to articulate
each one correctly and then learning the
corresponding grapheme for each of
them!
A phoneme is spoken. A grapheme is
written.
Blending phonemes
• Blending phonemes into words for
reading
• Recognising the letter sounds in a written
word e.g. c-u-p, sh-ee-p and merging them
into the correct order to pronounce the
word “cup” and “sheep”
Segmenting Phonemes
Segmenting phonemes into words for
spelling by identifying the individual
sounds in a spoken word, starting with
simple CVC words (eg c a t) and writing
down letters for each sound (phoneme) to
form the word.
Other terminology we use with the
children
• Digraph – where 2 letters make one sound
eg aw, or, ch, sh
• Trigraph – 3 letters make one sound eg
igh, air.
• Split-digraph – two letters that make a
sound are split up by another sound eg
ate, polite.
Year 1 and 2
• revision of phase 3-4 and the introduction of phases 5 to
6.
• Consolidation of graphemes to represent each
phoneme (unit of sound).
• Using Frequency Words and Tricky Words
• Introducing alternative graphemes for spellings i.e. may,
make, pain, grey, neigh
• Introduces alternate pronunciations for reading – i.e.
mean, bread, break
• Past and present tense
• Introduction of prefixes and suffixes – this continues into
phase 6 (year 3)
Typical activities
Identify (show me on your fingers) how many
phonemes in these words:
bleed
flop
cow
jumper
chair
pencil
Buried Treasure
There are many online games that your
children can play at home. There is a list
of useful websites on one of the handouts.
This is one of them.
buried treasure
• Phonics is the step up to word recognition.
• Automatic reading and spelling of ALL
words is the ULTIMATE GOAL!
Useful websites:
www.lettersandsounds.com
www.getreadingright.com
www.bigbrownbear.co.uk
www.starfall.com
www.yourchildlearns.com
www.ictgames.com/literacy.html
www.coxhoe.durham.sch.uk/curriculum/literacy.htm
www.foniks.org
www.phonicsplay.co.uk
Typical activities
I have set out a range of typical activities
we might use with the children so you can
have some first hand experience – don’t
worry we’re not judging your performance
– we try to make them fun!
•
•
•
Phase
Phonic Knowledge and Skills
Phase One (Nursery/Reception)Activities are divided into seven aspects, including
environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme,
alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.Phase Two
(Reception) up to 6 weeksLearning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each.
Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate
sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.Phase Three (Reception) up to 12
weeksThe remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such
as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters.
Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children
will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English
language.Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeksNo new grapheme-phoneme
correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segent longer
words with adjacet consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.Phase Five (Throughout Year
1)Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the
phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the
graphemes they already know.Phase Six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond)Working
on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.