Phonics for parents Mrs Tighe

Successful reading demands both word level reading and the ability to comprehend what has been read.

Language comprehension Word recognition

Word Recognition Good language comprehension, poor word recognition Good word recognition, good language comprehension Poor word recognition, poor language comprehension Good word recognition, poor language comprehension Language comprehension

Enunciation When working with your child on a phonics activity, it is essential that both of you enunciate the sounds correctly. Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely.

Letters and Sounds DVD clip – enunciation

Phonic terminology: some definitions

Some definitions A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. C-u-pc-a-td-o-g

Count the phonemes How many phonemes (units of sound) can you count in the following words? Bus Ship Bend Round

Some definitions Grapheme Letter(s) representing a phoneme taiigh

Some definitions Blending Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.

Some definitions Oral blending Hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a spoken word – no text is used. For example, when a teacher calls out ‘b-u-s’, the children say ‘bus’. This skill is usually taught before blending and reading printed words.

Some definitions Segmenting Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound to form the word ‘him’.

Some definitions Digraph Two letters, which make one sound A consonant digraph contains two consonants shckthll A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel ai ee ar oy

Some definitions Trigraph Three letters, which make one sound igh dge

Some definitions Split digraph A digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent (e.g. make).

CVC Words C consonant phoneme V vowel phoneme Cconsonant phoneme

Consonant digraphs ll ss ff zz hill pufffizz sh ch th wh shipchat thin ck ng qu x fox singquick

A segmenting activity s l i p il sp

Segmenting WORDPHONEMES shelfshelf dressdress thinkthink stringstring sprintsprint flickflick

A basic principle The same phoneme can be represented in more than one way: burn first term heard work

Sorting activity Field Moon Room Meal Mine Bus Snake

The same phoneme can be represented in more than one way aa-eaiayeyeigh ee-eeaeey ii-eieighy oo-eoaoeow uu-eueooew oououl owouough oioy ara oraworeaough airareear eerear

Spelling There are patterns that help to narrow possibilities – for example for each vowel phoneme some digraphs and trigraphs are more frequently used before certain consonants than others. Children need to explore these patterns through word investigations. This can be discussed while reading at home or discussing the spelling pattern in their key words

Spelling – using sound buttons Placing a dot underneath each grapheme helps children to segment and blend difficult words, both for reading and spelling

High frequency words The majority of high frequency words are phonically regular. Some exceptions – for example the and was – are directly taught and called ‘tricky words’.

Games to play at home The sorting activities above There are lots of videos and websites to support phonics at home, including: Mr Thorne does phonics Jolly phonics BBC bitesize Phonicsplay.com Letters-and-sounds.com Ictgames.com Pirate phonics (ipad game)

Key word games Key word bingo Memory Snap Hide the key words around the house and have a treasure hunt