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• Since 2009 schools have been teaching children phonics.
• This is a method of teaching reading which first teaches the pure letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.

Letters and Sounds Phase One
Before children start learning the sounds, this develops children’s listening and speaking skills:
• Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds (talk while they play, animals sounds, asking questions, exploring sounds different objects make, language used in role play)
• Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds (home made shakers, playing with musical instruments outdoors, making simple rhythms, child listening to each other playing music)
• Aspect 3: General sound discrimination – body percussion (children marching/stomping/ splashing to the beat, re-enacting a story, comments on patterns made when drawing/colouring or mark making)
• Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme (enjoying stories that have rhyme, inventing their own or changing an ending to a well known rhyme; encouraging children to use well known rhymes in their role play
• Aspect 5: Alliteration (tongue twisters, in the role play – can I have some chunky chips, sizzling sausages?, books with rhymes and jungles)
• Aspect 6: Voice sounds (while on the swing encourage children to say ‘weee’; using sound effect words e.g. swish swosh, splishy, splashy; introduce new vocabulary to describe how things feel; replicate water sounds)
• Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting (encourage children to hear initial sounds e.g. hop h h h h, ball b b b ; children segment their names and names of toys e.g clap – dino-saurs, ha-rry) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190599/Let ters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf

Phoneme – this is the sound made
Grapheme – this is how the sound is written or represented on paper e.g. ch, th, qu
There are 44 phonemes in the English language however there are many graphemes to represent each phoneme.
e.g. oi and oy have the same sound but different graphemes to represent them.

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/
Daily 20 minute phonics sessions
Children are split into 4 groups according to how many sounds they know and their reading ability.

While children attend Little Valers they will do a lot of work on phase 1 phonics but children will also begin to learn the sounds using the Jolly Phonics program.
There is a story for each of the letter sounds as well as the letter sound action, introducing synthetic phonics in a fun and multi-sensory way. (a, a ants on my arm) http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

m, a, s, d, t, i, n, p ,g o, c, k, u, b, f, e, l, h, sh, r, j, v, y, w, th, z, ch, q, x, ng, nk
Also: ff, ll, ss, kn, gn , zz,

Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely
Avoid the uh at the end of sounds!
http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/853
57?uc=force_uj
To hear sounds being spoken

ffff
ssss x (c ssss) ssshhh ttthhh llll mmmm vvvvv zzzz nnnn nnng rrrr ttthhh

c-c-c-c h-h-h-h p-p-p-p t-t-t-t k-k-k-k ch-ch-ch-ch a-a-a-a e-e-e-e i-i-i-i o-o-o-o u-u-u-u b-b-b-b d-d-d-d g-g-g-g j-j-j-j w-w-w-w y-y-y-y qu (c w)

ay (spray) ee (feet) igh (high) ow (blow) oo (fool) oo (book) ar (start) or (door)
Ir (bird) ou (shout) oy (boy)

ea, oi a-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, aw, are, ur, er, ai, oa, ew, ire, ear, ure, tion, cious, tious

Nursery
End of autumn term
Working on
Phase 1
End of spring term
Working on
Phase 1
End of summer term
Working on
Phase 1
Reception
Year 1
Working on set 1 sounds
Working on set 2 sounds
Working on set 2 sounds
Working on set 2 Working on set 3 Working on set 3
YEAR 1 Phonics
Check

In the summer term of Year 1 children have to complete a phonics check.
They have to read 40 words using their phonetical knowledge to decode the words.
This test is reported to the local authority and to parents.
2014: 82% of our children passed the check

Once children are secure with the individual sounds we encourage them to blend the sounds together to make a word.
Children begin by reading VC words (vowel, consonant) in, if, is, it on, of am, an, as, at up

These are consonant, vowel, consonant words e.g. once children can read ‘at’ we add another consonant to the beginning of the word c at, b at, f at, h at, m at, p at, r at, s at, t at

As the children get more confident and know more sounds they will read bigger words
Examples of CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC b l a ck c c v c s t r ea m c c c v c f ou n d c v c c b l a n k c c v c c

Indentifying the sounds in words – once children are secure with the sounds, we teach them to identify and find the sounds in words.
•Sound buttons
•Phoneme fingers
•Robot arms

• Children have to read made-up nonsense words, this tests their pure decoding ability e.g. thop, quin, tid

pig church sheep boy light thorn pure black stream stamp

pig p church ch sheep sh boy b light thorn pure black l th p b stream s stamp s igh or ure l t i ur ee oy t g ch p t n a r a ck ea m m p

v e ng qu oa m w ai b er g r i n t p r o n k th ee s t

• High-frequency words are the words that appear most often in printed materials.
• High-frequency words are hard for students to remember because they tend to be abstract.
E.g. children can't use a picture clue to figure out the word with .
• Learning to recognise high-frequency words by sight is critical to developing fluency in reading

Some words in the English language are not phonetically decodable.
e.g. the, go, she, was
We call these: tricky words or red words.
These words just have to be learnt and require lots of practise and revisiting.
In your handout the HFW are split into phases and highlight the tricky words.

2 no go into the to
I
3 are my her you they all me be was he she we
4 said have like so do some come were there little one when out what
5 oh their people
Mr
Mrs looked called asked could

tone
cube
cave

Once your child has a secure grasp of the sounds they will start to be able to blend the sounds together and hear the word the sound makes.
1.vc words (use magnetic letters)
2.CVC words (similar end sound)
3.Ditty (short sentences)
4.Reading books (
Rigby star and then Ruth Miskin books)

When you child has been given a reading book:
1.discuss the sounds found in the book
2.share the tricky words
3.the words and talk about what happens on every page.
4.discuss questions at the back of the book
A child’s understand of what they have read is just as important as their ability to decode and read the words on the page.

Once children know the sounds and can form the letter associated with a sound they can begin to write. This process is called segmenting.
1.Children say the word
2.Sound out each sound they can hear
3.Write each of the sounds in the word
E.g. child wants to spell cat
Say cat
Say c-a-t (using their fingers to count how many sounds)
Write each sound (keep saying the word)
Correct spelling of tricky words need to be learnt.

When children are secure with hearing and writing sounds in words they will progress to writing a sentence.
The teacher will give them a sentence to hold (using sounds they know) e.g. The cat is red.
This time children count how many words in the sentence and then use the segmenting process to spell each word.
As the become more secure bigger sentences are given, more variety of sounds and finally children construct their own sentences.
Children are then taught to expand their sentences using a connective
‘and’

Ways to help your child
•Flashcards – with sounds and tricky words
•Magnetic letters
•Looking for letters around the environment, when sharing books
•Listening for initial sounds in words e.g. you are eating an apple, what sound does that start with?

Websites: http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/ http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm
http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_ga mes.html
http://www.primarytopics.co.uk/english/phoni cs/phonics.htm