WELCOME What is Phonics? Why Phonics?

Being able to read is one of the most important skills children will learn during their early schooling and it has far-reaching implications for lifelong confidence and well-being. (‘Letters and Sounds’ – Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics)

The Rose Review The independent review of early reading, conducted by Jim Rose, confirmed that ‘high quality phonic work’ should be the prime means for teaching beginner readers to learn to read and spell. The review also highlighted the importance of developing, from the earliest stages, children’s SPEAKING and LISTENING skills – ensuring that beginner readers are ready to get off to a good start in phonic work.

Important Reading Strategies Keep it fun → Look at the pictures (walk and talk through the book before ‘reading’) Guess from understanding the meaning Work out what it could be from the context Predict Build a bank of words recognised ‘on sight’ 'Sound out' using phonic knowledge*

Pre & post -Phase 1 Build on all the early language development and awareness babies and children naturally acquire through being exposed to talk. Motherese Chatter Listening to and talking about picture books, TV programmes, stories, rhymes and poetry, songs, music and rhythm – tap your name, think syllables...

Environmental sounds Instrumental sounds Body percussion Rhythm and rhyme Alliteration Voice sounds Oral blending and segmenting – no text is used, teacher/ puppet calls out word eg. b/u/s children work it out and say bus – sometimes called puppet talk or toy talk Phase 1 – wear giant ears!

Phonics is the link between letters and the sounds they make. Using a structured programme working through 6 progressive phases, children are taught: 1. All the common letter – sound correspondences. 2. To hear separate sounds within words – we call this to ‘segment’ 3. To ‘blend’ sounds together.

Multisensory Look… magic pen, model formation of letters – handwriting patter / using smartboard video function / visualisers Do… actions, sing songs, say rhymes, watch mouth shape in the mirror to pronounce pure sounds Listen…songs Contextualise - stories Jolly Phonics Games – try some later Write dance/ quickwrite/sand/

Games to play at home I spy Collect objects/ words with same sounds Segment/ stretch words out together use lower case magnetic letters on the fridge Snap

What are speech sounds? There are 26 letters in the English alphabet – but more than 40 speech sounds or phonemes A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word eg. f A grapheme is a letter or sequence of letters that represents a phoneme eg. f, ff or ph For pronunciation of pure sounds go to Tips and e-books at

It is easier for children to segment and blend pure sounds. Continuous phonemes:- f, l, m, n, r, s, sh, v, th, z Unvoiced phonemes:- e, p, t, ch, h Voiced phonemes:- b, d, g, w, qu, y, j fffffffffffffffffffffffff

Phase 2 Sounds are introduced in sets 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 2 Activity: How many words can you make? With the letters: s a t p i n m d Make as many cvc and cv words as you can – you will see that they are taught in this order for a reason!

Blending – nothing to do with tea! Recognising the letter sounds in a written word- eg. C-u-p, and blending them in the order which they are written, to read the word ‘cup’.

Segmenting – nothing to do with oranges! Segmenting/ stretching out words to know which letters to write down to represent a word. s-e-g-m-e-n-t

Sound buttons Sit leg mop can fit

Phase 3 Set 6: j, v, w, x Set 7 y,z,zz,qu Learn the alphabet and the names of the letters Set 8: ch, sh, th, ng Teach: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

Digraph Two letters which make one sound. Consonant digraph – two consonants net to each other, but they make a single sound – ‘friendly letters’ Eg. sh, ck, th, ll Vowel digraph contains at least one vowel – but the two letters make a single sound Eg. ai, ee, ar, oy

Trigraph 3 letters which make 1 sound S-igh-t F-ear Ch-air sight fear chair

Can you work out how many sounds there are in these words?

Phase 4 Consolidation unit - no new graphemes to learn. Reading and spelling ‘tricky words’ - Apply learning to reading and Spelling.

Phase 5 – throughout Year 1 Read phonetically decodable 2/3 syllable words Use alternative ways of pronouncing and spelling long vowel phonemes, eg / a/ ai, ei, a_e, ay Spell using phonetically plausible attempts at complex words. ' katorpilla' Graphemes/ alternate graphemes – find a best bet/ best fit - follow rules, even though there are exceptions to them all!

Phase 6 – Yr 2 Learn about phonic irregularities and less common gpcs (grapheme- phoneme correspondences) Apply phonics/ recognise and spell increasing number of complex words -ed past tense Adding suffixes and prefixes Punctuation Intonation Expression How to make a best guess – from meaning and context Personalised strategies for remembering difficult words

Tricky words Cannot be sounded out or blended – need to be recognised as a whole Eg, said, the, eyes Children develop their own ways of remembering over time. Constant repetition throughout daily phonics lessons

Play some games - have fun! Ask any questions – post it notes on board

Quiz 1. What is a phoneme? 2. How many phonemes are there in the word strap? 3. What is a digraph? 4. Give an example of two letters next to each other but which do not make a digraph. 5. Write the word strict and add the sound buttons.

Answers 1. What is a phoneme? The smallest unit of sound in a word 2. How many phonemes in the word strap? 5 3. What is a digraph? Two letters next to each other that make one sound 4.Two letters next to each other which don’t make a digraph – fl, tr, st 5. Strict has a button per letter

“It iz tiem too gow hoam,” Sed v teetures. “Gow and ingoi u nis bedtiem storee wiv yr children!”