Phonics Letters and Sounds

Aims of the session To become familiar with the letters and sounds programme. How phonics is taught at St Anne’s. Ideas for how to help at home. To answer questions about phonics.

The Spoken Language In order to make a good start in reading and writing, children need to have an adult listen to them and talk to them. Speaking and listening are the foundations for reading and writing. Show you are interested in their conversations. Read stories – books are rich sources of new words for your child; words you would not hear in everyday conversations appear in books, so read aloud and share books as often as you can. Use puppets and toys.

Letters and Sounds Over time, your child will begin to distinguish between different speech sounds (phonemes), and they will match sounds to letters (graphemes). This is called phonic knowledge. At St Anne’s we use the Letters and Sounds programme of study to teach phonics. It is divided into six phases with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. Children have time to practise and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’, which are words with spellings that are unusual.

Phase 1 Teachers plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as environmental sounds and sounds in the spoken language. Teachers teach a wide variety of nursery rhymes and songs. This helps to increase the number of words they know.

Phase 2 This is begins in the Reception year. Children begin to formally learn the sounds in the English language. They will be taught the sounds (phonemes) for a number of letters (graphemes) and which phoneme is represented by which grapheme e.g. s n a They will learn that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter e.g. ll as in b-e-ll They will learn to blend for reading e.g. c-a-t = cat and segment for spelling e.g. cat = c-a-t

Saying the sounds Your child will be taught how to pronounce the phonemes correctly to make sound blending easier. Try to avoid ‘uh’! Have a go at segmenting cat … c – a – t Your child will learn how to read and spell vc and cvc words They will also learn several ‘tricky words’; the, to, I, go, no

Phase 3 The main individual letter phonemes have now been learnt and the children are reading cvc words independently. The children will be taught more graphemes, most of which are made up of more than one letter (digraph) e.g. ‘oa’ as in boat. They will learn the letter names in the alphabet and how to form them correctly. More ‘tricky words’ will be read and they will begin to learn how to spell them. Children will read and write words in phrases and sentences.

Phase 4 Children practise previously learned graphemes and phonemes and learn how to read and write: cvcc words such as tent, damp, toast In the word ‘toast’, t=consonant, oa=vowel, s=consonant, t=consonant. ccvc words such as swim, plum, cream. They will learn more ‘tricky words’ – said, so, do, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what

Phase 5 During phase 5 the children are taught to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the phonemes already taught. Same letters, different sounds… mean bread read Same sound, different letters… may make pain They will also be taught how to read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words. They will recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically.

Phase 6 During this phase children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers. The shift from learning to read to reading to learn takes place and children read for information and pleasure. They will develop their understanding of spelling patterns, tenses, adding prefixes e.g. un, in and suffixes e.g. ing, est, ful to words and the spelling rules associated with them. This phase should be completed by the end of Year 2.

Learning Together What can we do at home? Read to and with your child as often as possible Practise blending and segmenting Flash cards Phonics apps/games Support and supplement weekly spellings Practise reading and spelling ‘tricky words’ Prepare for the Year 1 phonics screening check

Useful Websites achment_data/file/190599/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES pdf achment_data/file/190599/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES pdf years/letters-and-sounds