Phonics and Reading Workshop for Year 1 Parents Tuesday 8 th December 2015

Programme Welcome and Overview of session. The 6 Phases of teaching phonics. Reading at home demonstration. Games and resources to use at home, including useful websites. Questions.

Learning to Read and Write Before Letters and Sounds Speaking and listening skills are vital for later success in reading and writing. The greater the vocabulary a child has, the easier they should learn to read and write. Reading is not only about decoding words – other things can help us to learn to read, e.g. pictures, meaning. Teaching Phonics The teaching of phonics involves teaching children about the relationship between letters and the sounds they make. Phonics teaches children to use their knowledge of letters and sounds to read and write words.

Five Basic Skills for Reading and Writing 1. Learning letter sounds. 2. Learning to form letters correctly. 3. Blending sounds to read words. 4. Identifying and separating sounds in words (segmenting) to spell words. 5. Spelling tricky words.

The 6 Phases

Phase 1-3 (EYFS) Phase 1 (Nursery) Showing an awareness of rhyme and alliteration, exploring and experimenting with sounds and words, beginning to orally blend and segment phonemes. Phase 2 (For 6 weeks in Reception) Learning the first 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound (phoneme) for each, blending sounds for reading and segmenting for spelling simple words, e.g. cat, dog, understanding that we can write sounds (phonemes), reading simple captions. Phase 3 (For 12 weeks in Reception) Learning 7 more letters of the alphabet and their written form (grapheme), reading and spelling a wide range of simple cvc words, reading and spelling some words with 2 letter graphemes, e.g. chip, moon, night, reading simple captions and sentences.

Blending Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, e.g. c- u-p, and ‘blending’ them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word cup. Segmenting ‘Chopping Up’ the word to spell it out. The opposite of blending.

Phase 3 - Letter Progression Graphemes: ear, air, ure, er, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo Pairs of letters (Consonant digraphs): ch, sh, th, ng. Letter Progression: Set 6 -j, v, w, x Set 7 -y, z, zz, qu

Phase 4 ( Reception for 4-6 weeks) Continue to practice skills taught in Phase 3 and start to blend and segment more complex words, e.g. went stand shrink

Once children are good with single phonemes… DIGRAPHS – 2 letters that make 1 sound ll ss zz oa ai TRIGRAPHS – 3 letters that make 1 sound igh dge

Phase 5 (throughout Year 1) Teaching children more ways of pronouncing graphemes already taught, e.g. a can make a different sound as in cat, bath, plate.

Phase 6 (throughout Year 2) Children learn about different ways of spelling words that sound the same, e.g. see/sea, bed/head. Adding new bits to the beginning of words (prefixes) and to the end of words (suffixes). Becoming more fluent in using all of the skills and knowledge learned in phases 2 to 5.

Teaching Letter Sounds (Phonemes) Correct pronunciation is vital. We all need to use the same language at home and at school. Little and often is the key. Try to make activities fun. If your child is enjoying activities they will learn more.

Tricky Words There are many words in the English language that cannot be read using phonics. Children need to be taught these separately and simply recall them from memory. Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become easier to work out once we have learned the harder phonemes, e.g. out, there.

The Alphabet … don’t forget to practice saying or singing the alphabet with your child. This is a really important skill that they need for later learning!

General strategies used for reading in school  Daily whole class story sessions where adults read to children.  Daily whole class shared reading and writing sessions each week using a big book.  Use of visuals to engage children.  Guided reading activities – at least once per week per child.  Weekly visits to the library to make own choices.  Sending home of book from the reading scheme for parents/carers to read with/to their child.  A well resourced book corner for children to use during child initiated time.  Sentence and word level activities.

What do your children need?  To hear texts read aloud.  To talk about their reading.  To take turns in reading.  To build up confidence and experience.  To choose books freely.  To read familiar texts over and over again.  Texts that interest them.  Texts that intrigue them..  Texts that have repetition in them.  Texts that have rhythm and rhyme.  Texts that have powerful language.  Texts that have familiar narrative structures.  Texts that have characters/places/themes they can identify with.

Reading at home Before reading: Why did you choose it? What is the title of the book? What sort of book do you think it’s going to be? Who is the author of the book? Who is the illustrator? Have you read any books by this author or illustrator? What do you think will happen in this book? (fiction) What information do you think will be in this book? (non- fiction)

During reading: What has happened so far in this book? Is the story so far as you expected? How do you think the character/ characters feel? Which is your favourite character so far? Why? Where is the story taking place? What do you think……….means? Do the illustrations tell us any more about the story than we can get from the words?

After reading: Which part of the story did you enjoy most? Can you show me a favourite illustration? Can you describe a favourite part, or exciting/funny moment in the story? Are there any repetitive words or phrases that you remember from the story? Tell me more about the characters in the story? Which was your favourite character and why? If you had written this book, how would you have made it different? Did you like the ending? Did it end as you expected? Would you read this book again? Would you tell your friends about it and recommend it?

Now you have the knowledge…. Play lots of sound and listening games with your child. Read as much as possible to and with your child. Encourage and praise – get them to have a ‘good guess’. Ask your child’s teacher if you want to know more.

Useful websites htm

Phonicsplay.co.uk

Bug Club!

Any Questions? Handouts will be sent home with children. Autumn and Spring term meetings for writing and maths.