Why do we use phonics? The way that we teach reading in UK schools has changed in the past few years. Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught in helping them learn to read. This is having a big impact and helping many children learn to read and spell. It runs alongside other teaching methods such as Guided Reading and Shared Reading to help children develop all the other vital reading skills and hopefully give them a real love of reading.

What exactly is phonics? Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Children are taught to listen carefully and identify the sounds that make each word. This helps children to read and spell words.

Children are taught three things in phonics lessons: GPCs: grapheme phoneme correspondence Blending Segmenting

How is phonics taught? Approximately 20 minutes every day. ‘Letters and Sounds’ Actions and materials from the ‘Jolly Phonics’ scheme. Espresso ‘Phonics Play’ website can be used for online games and activities. This can be accessed at home to support learning.

Letters and Sounds is split into 6 phases. In Reception, the children start with Phase 1. The main aim of this phase is for children to experience regular, planned opportunities to listen carefully and talk extensively about what they hear, see and do. This phase continues throughout the subsequent phases. Soon after starting school, we begin Phase 2, when children start to recognise letters and the sounds that they make. They are also given opportunities to practise blending for reading and segmenting for writing as soon as they recognise a few letters. Phase 3: introduces digraphs and trigraphs. Phase 4: no new phonemes, but uses the phonemes they know to create clusters.

By the end of the Reception year, children will have learnt 44 graphemes, enabling them to sound out and write most of the words they would need. For example: If a Reception child writes the word ‘kite’ by applying phonics, it would be written k-igh-t kight We want the children to have the confidence to write independently, so we would not correct this.

In Year 1, we cover phase 5 of Letters and Sounds. In this phase, the children learn alternative spellings of the graphemes that they know. For example: Reception children know the grapheme ‘oi’, as in boil. In year 1, they learn ‘oy’, as in boy. They also learn ‘split digraphs’ e.g. a-e as in game i-e as in pine

Phonics Practice It is important to continue to practise phonics regularly when your child starts to read a book, as the phonics in their book will not be at the same level as the phonics being taught in class. It is important think carefully about the words that you make for them to read. For example: n-o-w

In Year 2, we cover phase 6 of Letters and Sounds through the No Nonsense Spelling programme. The aim throughout this phase is for children to become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers. The work that they will cover during this year will include changing words to the past tense, adding suffixes and learning how to spell longer words.

The format of each session is: Introduction - The teacher will explain to the children what they will be learning today and get them enthusiastic and motivated for the session. Revisit and review - The children will play a quick fire game to practise something they have learned before and help build their confidence. Teach - The children will be taught a new phoneme/grapheme or a new skill - this will be taught in a fun multisensory way and may well involve: songs, actions, pictures, puppets, writing giant letters in the air. Practise - The children play fast, fun games to practise the new thing they have just learned. Apply - The children will have a quick go at reading or writing sentences that involve the new thing they have just learned. The aim is for each session to be ACTIVE and FUN!

Key Messages Read the same book more than once. This encourages fluency and sight-reading. If in doubt, sound it out! (Use your robot arms and sound buttons) Be a reading detective! Look at the pictures together and ask questions. (semantics) Look at words in isolation and try different methods for learning accurate spelling (particularly for the ‘Tricky’ words).