Welcome to Ridge
House Letters and
Sounds Presentation
5 Basic Skills
1. Learning letter sound
2. Letter formation
3. Blending
4. Identifying sounds
5. Tricky words
Why phonics?
 The aim is to secure essential phonic knowledge
and skills so that children progress quickly to
independent reading and writing
 Reading and writing are like a code, phonics is
teaching the child to crack the code
 Gives us the skills of blending for reading and
segmenting for spelling.
Blending is recognising the
letter sounds in a written
word, for example c-u-p,
and merging or synthesising
them in the order in which
they
are
written
to
pronounce the word ‘cup’
Segmenting is identifying the
individual sounds in a spoken word
(e.g. ‘him’ = h – i - m) and writing
down letters/grapheme for each
sound to form the word.
Digraph
A digraph contains two letters and it makes
one sound
oa ai ee ie
for these digraphs we say ‘when two vowels go
walking the first one does the talking’, so you
say the letter name to make the sound
Other digraphs
oo ar or er oi sh ck th ll
Reading and Writing
For reading:
 Phonemes/sounds associated with particular
graphemes/letters are pronounced in isolation and
blended together.
For writing:
 Words are segmented into phonemes orally, and a
grapheme written to represent each phoneme
Phase one
 In developing their phonological awareness
children will improve their ability to distinguish
between sounds and to speak clearly and audibly
with confidence and control.
 Through speaking and listening activities, children
will develop their language structures and
increase their vocabulary.
Phase One outcomes
 Explore and experiment with sounds and words
 Listen attentively
 Show a growing awareness and appreciation of
rhyme, rhythm and alliteration
 Speak clearly and audibly with confidence and
control
 Distinguish between different sounds in words
 Develop awareness of the differences between
phonemes
Phase 2
 To introduce grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound)
correspondences
 (video clip)
Children know that words are
constructed from phonemes and that
phonemes
are
represented
by
graphemes
They have knowledge of a small
selection of common consonants and
vowels.
They blend them together in reading
simple CVC words and segment them
to support spelling.
Tricky words
Some words cannot be sounded out or spelt
correctly by listening for the sounds in them. These
are called ‘tricky words’ and have to be learnt.
Examples of tricky words: the, to, I, no, go, into, he,
she, me, we.
The best way of learning these are flash cards and
matching games and finding words in books,
magazines, comics etc.
High frequency words
The National Literacy Strategy "Framework for Teaching" identifies an
essential set of words that your child needs to learn “even to tackle very
simple texts”.
According to the NLS; “these words play an important part in holding
together the general coherence of texts and teachers are encouraged to
get their pupils to recognise them as soon as possible so they can get pace
and accuracy into their reading at an early stage. Some of these words
have irregular or difficult spellings and, because they often play an
important grammatical part, they are hard to predict from the surrounding
text.”
Below are listed the 45 high frequency words that your child will be
expected to read on sight, in and out of context, by the end of their first
year in school
I
go
come
went
up
you
day
was
Look
are
the
of
we
this
dog
me
Like
going
big
she
and
they
my
see
On
away
mum
it
at
play
no
yes
For
a
dad
can
he
am
all
Is
cat
get
said
to
in
Phase 3
 To teach children one grapheme for each of the
44 phonemes in order to read and spell simple
regular words.
Phase Three outcomes
 Children link sounds to letters, naming and
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


sounding the letters of the alphabet.
They recognise letter shapes and say a sound for
each.
They hear and say sounds in the order in which
they occur in the word,
They read simple words by sounding out and
blending the phonemes all through the word from
left to right.
They recognise common digraphs and read some
high frequency words
Phase four
 To teach children to read and spell words
containing adjacent consonants.
Phase four outcomes
 Children are able to blend and segment adjacent
consonants in words
 They apply this skill when reading unfamiliar texts
and in spelling
Phase 5
 Teaching children to recognise and use alternative
ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling
the phonemes already taught.
Phase 5 outcomes
 Children will:
 use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes
and spelling the phonemes corresponding to long vowel
phonemes.
 identify the constituent parts of two-syllable and
three-syllable words and be able to read and spell
phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable
words.
 recognise an increasing number of high frequency
words automatically.
 apply phonic knowledge and skills as the prime
approach in reading and spelling when the words are
unfamiliar and not completely decodable.
Phase 6
 Teaching children to develop their skill and
automaticity in reading and spelling, creating
ever-increasing capacity to attend to reading for
meaning.
Phase six outcomes
Children will:
 Apply their phonics skills and knowledge to
recognise and spell an increasing number of
complex words.
 Read an increasing number of high and medium
frequency words independently and automatically.
Summary
 A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word,
a phoneme may be represented by 1, 2, 3 or 4
letters e.g. t, ai, igh, eigh.
 A syllable is a word or part of a word that
contains one vowel sound.
 A grapheme is the letter(s) representing a
phoneme. It is the written representation of a
sound which may consist of 1 or more letters. E.g.
the phoneme ‘s’ can be represented by the
grapheme s (sun), se (mouse), c (city), sc or ce
(science)
Summary continued
 Digraph is two letters which make one sound. A consonant





digraph contains two consonants e.g. sh, ck, th, ll. A vowel digraph
contains at least one vowel ai, ee, ar, oy
Split digraph, is a digraph in which the two letters are not
adjacent e.g. make
Trigraph, three letters, which make one sound igh, dge
Oral blending-hearing a series of spoken sounds & merging them
together to make a spoken word (no text is used) e.g. when a
teacher calls out ‘b-u-s’ the children say bus. This skill is usually
taught before blending and reading printed words
Blending-recognising the letter sounds in a written word, e.g. c-up, and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they
are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’
Segmenting-identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word
e.g. h-i-m and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound
to form the word ‘him’
Useful websites & resources

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


www.jollylearning.co.uk
www.phonicsplay.co.uk
www.familylearning.org.uk
www.education.gov.uk search letters and sounds
www.letters-and-sounds.com
 Magnetic letters,
 Flash cards,
 Please ask a member of staff if you have any
questions or want to borrow resources