How we teach Phonics and Reading at
Thursday 20th September 2012
Welcome and thank you for coming to our meeting.
We aim to cover:
Phonics
Reading
Parental involvement
After the presentation parents can look around classes,
chat to teachers and have a cup of tea or coffee. We are
happy to answer any questions you might have.
Being able to read is the most
important skill children will learn
during their early schooling and
has far- reaching implications for
lifelong confidence and wellbeing.
The Rose Review (2009)
The independent review of early reading,
conducted by Jim Rose, confirmed that
‘high quality phonic work’ should be the
prime means for teaching beginner
readers to learn to read (and spell).
Phonics
• Phonics is the understanding of how letters combine
to make words.
• We teach by slowly creating a working knowledge of
the letter sounds.
• Although there are 26 letters in the English
alphabet, there are more than 40 speech sounds.
• Each sound is taught through stories, songs ,rhymes
and games which encourages children to participate
through actions and sounds.
Phonics
1. Letter sounds
Children learn to make the link between letters and the sounds they make.
At Holy Cross and All saints RC Primary School we follow the DFE ‘Letters
and Sounds Programme this highly structured programme which allows
children to work through 6 progressive phases, children are taught:
The full range of common letter/ sound correspondences.
To hear separate sounds within words.
To blend sounds together.
Phonics
2. Letter formation
•Children will begin to learn how to use and hold their pencil correctly.
•They will learn through play how to form letters.
•Children are encouraged to write in gloop, sand, jelly and with a variety of
implements.
•Above all our aim is to encourage a desire to write
•As children develop through the phonics phases they practise writing the
letters and sounds.
•It is important that children are then encouraged and supported to apply
their phonic knowledge in their reading and writing.
Phonics
3. Identify sounds in words
• To help children spell words they must first listen to
the sounds and segment sounds e.g c-a-t.
• Sound buttons are also taught e.g. shop has three
sound buttons sh.o.p.
• Games such as I spy and tapping out the sounds in
a word can help.
Phonics
4. Blending
• Blending is the process of saying individual sounds and then
running them together to make words.
• To begin with children will sound out words individually and
then say them more quickly to hear the word, this process
varies with every child .
• We often use games to help children hear sounds blended
together.
• Words that we cannot blend such as said we call tricky
words and must be learned by sight.
Phonics
5. Spelling tricky words
• There are several ways of learning tricky spellings.
• Look, say, cover, write, check – write the letters in
the air to check spellings
• Say it as it sounds e.g. Monday is said
M- on-day
• Mnemonics – where the initial letter of each word
gives it’s correct spelling e.g. Laugh= Laugh At Ugly
Goats Hair.
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 weeks
Learning 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 weeks
The 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 weeks
No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in
this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words
with adjacent 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.
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/what-is-letters-andsounds.html
Reading in school and at home.
• When your child receives a book they will be heard
individually read, on a weekly basis in school. (Some children
that need more support, may be heard more often)
• We also run two reading intervention programmes FFT (Fisher
Family Trust and BRF (Better Reading Partners)
• Please try and aim to read with your child every day to
encourage enjoyment in reading.
• Please make a note in your child’s reading diary. This should
be brought into school every day with your child’s reading
book.
• Children move progressively through the reading scheme. Not
all children develop at the same time or pace.
Book Bands at Holy Cross and All Saints RC
Primary (2012)
Band
Reading Recovery
Level
1
1, 2
2
3, 4, 5
3
6, 7, 8
4
9, 10, 11
5
12, 13, 14
6
15, 16
ApproxNC
Level
Approx Reading
Age
W
Pink
W
Approx Age 5
Red
1C
Approx Age 5.5
Yellow
1C
Approx Age 5.5 to 6
Blue
1B
Approx Age 5.5 to 6
Green
1B
Approx Age 6 to 6.5
Orange
17, 18
1A
19, 20
2C
9
21, 22
2B
10
23, 24
2A
8 &7
Colour
Turquoise
Approx Age 6.5 to 7.5
PPurple
Approx Age 7.5 to 8
Gold
11
3C
12
‘High’ L3
13
‘Low’ L4
14
‘High’ L4
15
‘Low’ L5
16
‘High’ L5
Approx Age 7.5 to 8
White
Black
Brown
Grey
Maroon
Dark Blue
YR
Y1
Y2
Y3
Y4
Y5
Y6
A love of Reading
• Our aim is to create children who will become
able independent readers.
• We encourage children to read for pleasure.
The Research...
‘Being more enthusiastic about reading and a frequent reader,
was more of an advantage on it’s own than having well educated
parents in good jobs’ (PISA :Programme of International Student
Assessment, 2000)
‘ Children who say that they enjoy reading and who read for
pleasure in their own time do better at school. Reading for
enjoyment is positively associated with reading attainment and
writing ability’ (OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development, 2002)
Developing your
child’s reading skills
Children are taught reading skills through literacy
lessons, comprehension activities and daily Guided
Reading sessions.
•Guided reading is used to teach children how to improve their reading. It is an
opportunity for the teacher to give individual help and to assess each child’s progress and
needs.
•Guided Reading takes place every day after lunch for 20 minutes and the children are in
small groups based on their strengths and needs.
• The teacher focuses on the meaning of the text and application of various reading
strategies to problem solve when they do hit a road block in their knowledge or reading
ability (phonics, picture clues, previous knowledge of what happened, predicting).
•By providing small groups of pupils the opportunity to learn various reading strategies
with guidance from the teacher, the children will develop the skills and knowledge
required to read increasingly more difficult texts on their own.
•Independent reading is the GOAL - guided reading provides the framework to ensure that
students are able to apply strategies to make meaning from print.
What does a Guided Reading session look like?
Pre-Reading: The teacher asks the children questions predicting what the text
may be about based on the title, vocabulary introduction, or discussing ideas
that will provide the readers with the background knowledge required for the
text.
Reading: The teacher observes the students as they read the text softly or
silently to themselves. They may read round in a group too. The teacher
provides guidance and coaching to individuals based on their observations by
providing prompts, asking questions, and encouraging attempts at reading by
using phonics/picture clues .
Post Reading: The teacher asks questions to ensure that the text has been
comprehended by the readers and praises their efforts. Further, the teacher
may observe gaps in strategy application and address these gaps following in
the following session.
Whilst the teacher is reading with the group the rest of the class will be doing
a variety of reading and spelling activities on a rota basis.
Learning to Read
• As parents or carers you are your
child’s most influential teacher with
an incredibly important role to play
in helping your child to read.
Reading Games
• Look at letters and mail - talk about the address, sort by name. Send a
letter to your child and read it together. Send postcards and talk about
them.
• Print hunt – encourage you child to recognise signs and labels, cars,
registrations etc.
• I Spy – Links sounds to real life objects.
• What does it begin with? Use magnetic letters on the fridge or sponge
letters in the bath e.g what does hat begin with?
• Make letter cards together.
• Odd One Out – collect items which begin with S and one which is T. Ask you
child to spot the odd one out.
• Cooking – Follow a recipe, use icing to write letters or names.
• Make labels together and match them to items around the home.
• If you have the internet look for sites such as help promote reading skills.
Reading
Influence your child to take an interest.
• Let your child see you read books, magazines, they will want
to do what you are doing they love to copy grown ups.
• Choose a quiet time everyday to read a story, always read
with enthusiasm and use lots of expression.
• Join the library and talk about the books they choose.
• Offer your children choice, magazines, poems, books,
information books, rhymes, fairytales.
• When your child brings home a reading book, communicate
with the teacher regularly with positive comments and of any
concerns, this shows your child you value their reading.
Reading
What to talk about?
These are often ideas which parents or carers automatically talk
about with their children
It is just as important that a child understands what is happening in
the story as the importance of reading itself.
• Talk about:
• Emotions and feelings of characters
• The weather and clothing worn by characters
• Likes and dislikes and personal choice of reading materials
• Predict what might happen next.
• Their experiences, past, present and future events.
• Who are the characters? (names, description, place in the family
and where they live)
• Where does the story take place?
Thank you
for listening