Phonics Meeting for Parents Tuesday 20th September

Love reading We believe that developing a love of books and stories is key to enjoying reading. We have a book sharing scheme which plays an important role in this. Let your child hold the book and turn the pages, talk about the story and the pictures and ask questions about what has happened and what they think might happen next.

Why teach phonics? The ability to read and write well is a vital skill for all children, paving the way for an enjoyable and successful school experience. Phonics helps children to develop good reading and spelling skills We use a synthetic scheme called ‘Letters and Sounds’ as our teaching resource.

Why synthetic phonics? “Synthetic phonics offers the vast majority of young children the best and most direct route to becoming skilled readers and writers” Sir Jim Rose, Rose Review of Reading 2006 Synthetic phonics is simply the ability to convert a letter or letter group into sounds that are then blended together into a word.

Phonics at a glance Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending Knowledge of the alphabetic code.

Letters and Sounds Letters and Sounds consist of a 6 phase teaching programme which begins in Nursery. The Nursery children will begin with Phase 1 and once they have mastered it they will begin to look at Phase 2. But only when they are ready!

Phase 1 This Phase is broken down into 7 aspects. These are taught throughout the year in all areas of the setting not just at specific carpet time sessions. Aspect 1 - Environmental Sounds We introduce the good listening rules and emphasise these at all carpet time sessions so that the children are aware of what is expected. We explore different animal sounds and identify the sounds we hear around us. We go on listening walks and play different games to encourage good listening.

Phase 1 - continued Aspect 2 – Instrumental Sounds The children will play lots of games using different musical instruments. They will practise tapping out rhythms using the musical instruments. The musical instruments will then be left out for the children to explore independently. Aspect 3 – Body Percussion This includes children listening and differentiating between different rhythms, speeds and volumes of speech and using their bodies to show this. E.G stamping, clapping and moving their bodies.

Phase 1 - continued Aspect 4 – Rhythm and Rhyme Children need to learn a stack of rhymes through repetition. We encourage them to sing and join in with actions during carpet sessions and also in other areas as they play. We also encourage them to make up their own songs and rhymes. We play lots of rhyming games – and the children love making rhyming soup! We read lots of rhyming stories and the children are quick to join in with the rhyming words. Aspect 5 – Alliteration Lots of books contain alliterative sentences and we also encourage alliteration through adding adjectives to words as we talk with children in the different areas. E.G. sizzling sausages in the home corner.

Phase 1 - continued Aspect 6 – Voice Sounds In this phase we use our voices to make different sounds. E.G. zzzz for a bee. Exaggerated facial expressions and actions as we say different sounds help to support listening and attention span. We encourage the children to look in mirrors as they make these sounds so they can see how the mouth shape changes. Aspect 7 – Oral blending and segmenting This is probably the area where it is more obvious that reading skills are being taught. We use a lot of ‘sound talking’ E.G. This is a c-a-t. We play lots of games using sound talk where the children have to blend the sounds they hear to make a word and where the children have to say the sounds they hear in words for others to blend together.

Some Definitions A Phoneme This is the smallest unit of sound in a word. E.G. c-a-t has 3 phonemes.

A grapheme These are the letters that represent the phoneme. Children need to practise recognising the grapheme and saying the phoneme that it represents.

A phoneme you hear A grapheme you see

How to say the sounds Saying the sounds correctly with your child is extremely important The way we say sounds may well be different from when you were at school We say the shortest form of the sounds

Phase 2 This phase begins in Reception. The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. The children will learn a sound a day and this will feel like we are moving very quickly however, there will be lots of repetition. By the end of this phase many children should be able to read VC (vowel/consonant – it) and CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant – sat) words and to spell them either by using magnetic letters or by writing the letters on paper or on whiteboards. They will also be taught how to read simple captions. The introduction of ‘tricky words’ are taught. These are words that cannot be sounded out and they “Just have to know them!”

Phase 3 We aim to take about 12 weeks for this phase but often it takes longer as the children develop more complex skills. This Phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them compromising two letters (e.g. ai). By the end of Phase 3 the children can represent each of the 42 phonemes (sounds). Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple words and captions. They will learn more ‘tricky words’ They will learn letter names during this phase. The children love to learn the ‘monkey alphabet song!’

Phase 4 Should take 4-6 weeks. It is possible that not all children will reach this phase in Reception. The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants CVCC words. E.G went They will develop their caption reading skills.

Phase 5 Phase 5 This Phase begins at the start of Year 1. The children will learn new graphemes for reading and spelling. They will learn best fit spellings. E.g. ai, a-e, ay all make the same sound in words They will continue to read and spell tricky words. Phase 6 This phase focuses more on spelling rules.

Lesson format In each year group, phonic lessons follow the same format: Revise: The children will revise previous learning. Teach: New phonemes or high frequency or tricky words will be taught. Practice: The children will practise the new learning by reading and/or writing the words. Apply: The children will apply their new learning by reading or writing sentences.

Phonic learning is fun! The children learn and practise their phonemes in lots of fun ways: Sound talking and rhyming. Playing games – table games or interactive games on the computer. Using phoneme frames, “sound buttons” and whiteboards to spell words. Sorting phonemes. Making words with phonemes. Being phoneme “detectives”. Reading and writing sentences. Silly sentences are great fun!

How can I help? Sing an alphabet song together Play ‘I spy’ Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some two-grapheme (letter) combinations, eg: r-ai-n = rain blending for reading rain = r-ai-n segmenting for spelling Praise your child for trying out words Look at tricky words Look for phonic games Play pairs with words and pictures

And most importantly ENJOY READING! REMEMBER: Phonics is not the only thing needed to become a fluent reader. Please continue to read with your child each night and encourage them to: Sound out Re-read to check it makes sense. Use pictures for clues. Ask questions about the book. And most importantly ENJOY READING!

Useful tips www.phonicsplay.co.uk – this is a really useful website for different games. They are interactive games which your child will use in school. They also have things that you can print off and make into a game. www.lettersandsound.com – Same as above a really good website for games and activities. We love the Ruth Miskin flash cards and use these to teach the new sounds. They have fantastic rhymes to help remember how to write the sounds. E.G slither down the snake for s.

Have a go! Please feel free to have a go at some of the activities that your children enjoy in their phonic sessions. Thankyou.