Letters and Sounds Information for Parents

Aims of the session: To increase understanding of what phonics is and the way it is taught. To inform about the year 1 phonic screening check. To share ideas to help children with phonics, and therefore reading and writing at home.

Some Definitions A Phoneme This is the smallest unit of sound in a word. How many phonemes can you hear in tin ?

A grapheme These are the letters that represent the phoneme. The grapheme could be 1 letter, 2 letters or more! We use sound buttons to highlight each grapheme. t ai igh

A phoneme you hear A grapheme you see A word always has the same number of phonemes and graphemes!

First children need to know the sounds in the alphabetic code: SineEhttp:// SineE

Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending Knowledge of the alphabetic code. The pupils are taught all of the sounds (phonemes) in the English language and how to write them down. These are taught in a specific order through the 6 letters and sounds phases.

Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending Knowledge of the alphabetic code. Pupils are taught to blend the sounds that make up a word. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and can merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This is a vital skill in being able to read.

Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending Knowledge of the alphabetic code. Children are taught how to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the sounds (phonemes) that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words.

The Phases Explained It’s important that children are taught phonics in a specific order, so that they are taught the most common way of reading and writing each sound first. The ‘Letters and Sounds’ document is split into 6 distinct phases.

Phase 1 (pre school) * Showing an awareness of rhyme and alliteration. * Distinguishing between sounds in the environment and phonemes. * Exploring and experimenting with sounds and words. * Discriminating speech sounds in words. * Beginning to orally blend and segment phonemes.

Phase 1 phonic play game ingo.htmlhttp:// ingo.html

Phase 2 (Reception) Using common consonants and vowels. Blending for reading and segmenting for spelling simple cvc words. Understanding that words are constructed from phonemes and that phonemes are represented by graphemes.

Phase 3 (Reception) Knowing one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes. Children are taught the most common way of writing each sound.

Letter sets (phase 2) Set 1-s, a, t, p, Set 2-i, n, m, d, Set 3-g, o, c, k, Set 4-ck, e, u, r, Set 5-h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss,

Phase 3 sounds

Phase 4 ( Reception/Year 1 ) This is a consolidation unit. There are no new graphemes to learn. Segmenting adjacent consonants in words and applying this in spelling. Blending adjacent consonants in words and applying this skill when reading unfamiliar words.

Example of Phase 4 words

Phase 5 ( throughout Year 1/2) Reading phonetically decodable two- syllable and three-syllable words. Alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes. Yak happy cycle Using alternative ways of writing the phoneme. /ay/ pail pale pay

Phase 6 Introducing and teaching the past tense Investigating and learning how to add suffixes Teaching spelling long words Finding and learning the difficult bits in words

In addition to this, each week the children learn ‘common exception’ spelling words (those that are not spelt phonetically) and sight vocabulary. The key sight word list has also changed. There are now 300 words to learn. (100 in Rec/Y1 and an additional 200 in year 2)

The children always work within the phase that is appropriate to their level of learning. They are assessed regularly and grouped by ability.

Blending (for reading) Recognising the letter sounds in a written word e.g c-u-p sh-ee-p. Merging them into the correct order to pronounce the word cup and sheep.

Put the sound buttons under these words speedcrayon slightstair broomspade crawljumper

Segmenting (for spelling) Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m, s-t-or-k) and writing down letters for each sound (phoneme) to form the word him and stork.

How many phonemes are in each of these words? WordPhonemes string flop cow jumper chair pencil

The Year 1 Phonic Screening Check This is a ‘check’ that children are developing phonic skills. Children will be asked to read 20 real and 20 non-real words which are all able to be read using phonics. The non-words check children are decoding, not just using sight vocabulary. This will take place in the week beginning Monday 12th June.

The Year 1 Phonic Screening Check The words will cover all sounds up to the end of Phase 5. e.g.

How are children prepared for this? Through the teaching of systematic phonics! luto.html

How you can help! Encourage children to sound out when reading. Draw their attention to sounds made up of more than one letter just like you did when you put the sound buttons under each sound in a word. If they get stuck on a sound they don’t know yet, read the word for them praising them for the sounds they do recognise.

Although decoding using phonics is the primary skill used when learning to read, children need to have other strategies for when this doesn’t work:

Here are the phases. Where Can I Go To Find Out More?

l Where Can I Go To Find Out More?

This is great for some games that you can play at home.

Finally.... Thank you all for listening. We hope that it has been useful. If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to come and chat to us.