Sidbury Primary School
A guide to how phonics will help your child to read and spell
Letters and Sounds is a fun and interactive way to support children in learning how to read
and write.
The alphabet contains only 26 letters. Spoken English uses about 44 sounds (phonemes).
These phonemes are represented by letters (graphemes). In other words, a sound can be
represented by a letter (e.g. ‘s’ or ‘h’) or a group of letters (e.g. ‘th’ or ‘ear’).
Once children begin learning sounds, they are used quickly to read and spell words. This
information sheet provides an overview of the teaching of letters and sounds at Sidbury,
to help you support your child.
There are six phases of letters and sounds taught from Nursery to Year 2. Phase 1 begins in
Nursery/Playgroup, phases 2, 3 and 4 are taught in Reception and consolidated in Year 1.
Children are then taught phase 5 in Year 1 and phase 6 in Year 2.
Non Nonsense Spelling is a pathway for spelling, supporting strategies to make the correct
spelling choices. This pathway is used with children Year 2 to Year 6.
What do all the technical words mean?
What is a phoneme?
It is the smallest unit of sound and a piece of terminology that children like to use and
should be taught. At first it will equate with a letter sound but later on will include the
digraphs. For example `rain’ has three phonemes, / r / ai / n.
What is a grapheme?
A grapheme is a letter or a number of letters that represent a sound (phoneme) in a word.
Another way to explain it is to say that a grapheme is a letter or letters that spell a sound
in a word. E.g. /ee/,/ ea/, /ey/ all make the same phoneme but are spelt differently.
What is a digraph?
This is when two or more letters come together to make a phoneme. /oa/ makes the
sound in boat.
What is blending?
Blending is the process that is involved in bringing the sounds together to make a word or
a syllable and is how /c/ /a/ /t/ becomes cat.
To learn to read well children must be able to smoothly blend sounds together. Blending
sounds fluidly helps to improve fluency when reading. Blending is more difficult to do with
longer words so learning how to blend accurately from an early age is imperative.
Showing your child how to blend is important. Model how to ‘push’ sounds smoothly
together without stopping at each individual sound.
What is segmenting?
Segmenting is a skill used in spelling. In order to spell the word cat, it is necessary to
segment the word into its constituent sounds; c-a-t.
Children often understand segmenting as ‘chopping’ a word. Before writing a word
young children need time to think about it, say the word several times, ‘chop’ the word
and then write it. Once children have written the same word several times they won’t
need to use these four steps as frequently.
Children will enjoy spelling if it feels like fun and if they feel good about themselves as
spellers. We need, therefore, to be playful and positive in our approach – noticing and
praising what children can do as well as helping them to correct their mistakes.
What are tricky words?
Tricky words are words that cannot be ‘sounded-out’ but need to be learned by heart.
They don’t fit into the usual spelling patterns. In order to read simple sentences, it is
necessary for children to know some words that have unusual or untaught spellings. It
should be noted that, when teaching these words, it is important to always start with
sounds already known in the word, then focus on the 'tricky' part.
What are high frequency words?
High frequency (common) are words that recur frequently in much of the written material
young children read and that they need when they write.
What are CVC words?
CVC stands for consonant- vowel- consonant, so and word such as map, cat is CVC. In
phase 4 we talk about CCVC words such as clip, stop.
What are statutory words?
Each year group has words which the children are expected to be able to read and then
spell. In Reception and Key Stage 1 words are high frequency words (which are in your
child’s monkey book) and they are introduced to tricky words to read and spell as they
move through the Phases in Letters and Sounds. In Key Stage 2 the word list for spelling are
aimed at two year groups. So there is a Year3/4 word list and a Year 5/6 word list. Your
teacher can provide you with a word list for your child. Alternatively, you can have a look
at our website for word lists plus more phonic information.
What are the spelling strategies which my child is taught in Year 2- Year 6?
Look, say, cover, write, check
This is probably the most common strategy used to learn spellings.
Look: first look at the whole word carefully and if there is one part of the word that is
difficult, look at that part in more detail.
Say: say the word as you look at it, using different ways of pronouncing it if that will make
it more memorable.
Cover: cover the word.
Write: write the word from memory, saying the word as you do so.
Check: Have you got it right? If yes, try writing it again and again! If not, start again –
look, say, cover, write, check.
Trace, copy and replicate (and then check)
This is a similar learning process to ‘look, say, cover, write, check’ but is about
developing automaticity and muscle memory.
Write the word out on a sheet of paper ensuring that it is spelt correctly and it is large
enough to trace over. Trace over the word and say it at the same time. Move next to
the word you have just written and write it out as you say it. Turn the page over and
write the word as you say it, and then check that you have spelt it correctly.
If this is easy, do the same process for two different words at the same time. Once you
have written all your words this way and feel confident, miss out the tracing and
copying or the tracing alone and just write the words.
Segmentation strategy
The splitting of a word into its constituent phonemes in the correct order to support
spelling.
Quickwrite
Writing the words linked to the teaching focus with speed and fluency. The aim is to write
as many words as possible within a time constraint. Pupils can write words provided by the
teacher or generate their own examples. For example, in two minutes write as many
words as possible with the /iː/ phoneme. This can be turned into a variety of competitive
games including working in teams and developing relay race approaches.
Drawing around the word to show the shape
Draw around the words making a clear distinction in size where there are ascenders and
descenders. Look carefully at the shape of the word and the letters in each box. Now try
to write the word making sure that you get the same shape.
Drawing an image around the word
This strategy is all about making a word memorable. It links to meaning in order to try to
make the spelling noticeable.
You can’t use this method as your main method of learning spellings, but it
might work on those that are just a little more difficult to remember.
Words without vowels
This strategy is useful where the vowel choices are the challenge in the words. Write the
words without the vowels and pupils have to choose the correct grapheme to put in the
space. For example, for the word field:
Pyramid words
This method of learning words forces you to think of each letter separately.
You can then reverse the process so that you end up with a diamond
Other strategies.
Other methods can include:
•
Rainbow writing. Using coloured pencils in different ways can help to make parts of
words memorable. You could highlight the tricky part s of the word or write the
tricky part in a different colour. You could also write each letter in a different colour,
or write the word in red, then overlay in orange, yellow and so on.
Making up memorable ‘silly sentences’ containing the word
• Saying the word in a funny way – for example, pronouncing the ‘silent’ letters in
a word or clapping and counting to identify the syllables in a word.
•