Helping your child to read. Presentation Reception Parents and Carers. Decemer 2016 St Michael’s CE Primary School

Phonics and reading

Letters and Sounds The school follows the Letters and Sounds synthetic phonics programme and draws on resources from Jolly Phonics

Learning Letter Sounds Learning to read and write is complex! Spoken English uses about 42 sounds: phonemes. These phonemes are represented by letters: graphemes.

The alphabet contains only 26 letters, but we use it to make all the graphemes that represent the phonemes of English. In other words… a sound (phoneme) can be represented by one letter (grapheme) e.g. ‘s’ or a group of letters e.g. a digraph ‘th’ or a trigraph ‘igh’ AND There are sometimes more than one way to represent a sound e.g ‘igh’ ‘i-e’ ‘–y’ !!

Synthetic Phonics Children are taught to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sound(s) they represent. They are then taught how to read words by combining the sounds together, from left to right, to make words 'blending‘ and how to listen and isolate different sounds within words 'segmenting'. N.B. Oral segmenting and blending of words before your child even knows what letters are is vital.

As soon as children know a few letters (satpin) they can begin to read and spell words containing those letters. Your child will bring home sets of words to practise their recognition and blending skills, such as: at sat pat tap sap pit IMPORTANT: Please note these words are not be taught as sight words nor remembered without giving thought to the individual letters and sounds. Your child should read the sound for each letter and then blend it to read the word. You can also cut up the words and make sentences. Of course once they can read them on sight they no longer need to segment and blend each word.

High frequency and ‘tricky’ words There are 100 high frequency (common) words that recur frequently in much of the written material young children read and that they need when they write. High frequency words have often been regarded in the past as needing to be taught as sight words – to be learnt as visual wholes. The vast majority of these words are, however, decodable once letter sounds have been taught. E.g. and may at one time been taught as a sight word using flash cards, however it is fully decodable: a – n - d and children should start by segmenting a blending such words to decode them. As they read these words many times in text they will become ‘sight words’ or words that children can read ‘on sight’.

However … To read simple sentences, it is necessary for children to know some words that have unusual or untaught spellings. These are known as ‘tricky’ words and need to be learned by heart. It should be noted that, when teaching these words, it is important to always start with sounds already known in the word, then focus on the 'tricky' part. e.g. said

High frequency ‘tricky’ words to be learned during Phases 2 and 3 the to I go no he she we me be was my you they her all are into These words will be sent home each week, on cards, as children learn them. Please use these with the decodable words already sent home to make sentences to read.

Sound Buttons for Reading and Spelling Dots for phonemes for spelling --- And dots and dashes for graphemes, digraphs and trigraphs when reading! cat think ring Model on white board Explain that when spelling children should be encouraged to try different graphemes to see which spelling looks correct – as they are exposed to more words through reading they will be more aware of which spellings look correct.

Reading Progression The idea is for children to become skilled in all these areas as they progress in their reading, at their own rate. Reading books and the words and/or sentences brought home are levelled within the Letters and Sounds phases. Your child may be at one level for a short while or maybe longer. It is not a race to progress through the book levels! Several books at each level may need to be read for your child to experience the high frequency words they need to be able to read in more complex texts. It is also useful to re-read texts to improve fluency and to ask comprehension questions.

It is vital that children are given texts to read that they can easily decode and blend using only letters, and tricky words they have learnt so far. This will ensure that they develop the skills of segmenting and blending as the first method to read a word rather than develop default skills such as guessing.

What about ‘real’ books? As your child becomes more proficient in segmenting and blending, they will bring home books with captions and words which use graphemes they have learnt so far. Additionally,they will bring home a freely chosen library book for you to read with them. They should attempt to read words they can decode using letters learnt so far and read high frequency words they have learnt. They can also attempt to read un-decodable words by sounding out graphemes they know, with an adult then reading the word and helping with unusual pronunciations. This will encourage new vocabulary and promotes ‘self-teaching’.

How can you help your child with all this? Ask them questions as you read with them Discuss the meaning of new words Discuss the meaning of any figurative language Ask them to guess what will happen Fluency – modelling, paired reading, re-reading. Basically, enjoy reading and talking about and around books! All books! Again more details in the info pack

How can you help your child with all this? Enjoy reading with your child; don’t make it a chore – make it fun!! Use the strategies above as you read with your child, not as a list of tasks to work through.

Reading with your children. Setting Decoding Comprehension THE GOOD AND THE BAD!!!

Thank you Questions Useful phonics websites Pronunciation of phonemes http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2-games.html www.phonicsplay.com http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/ Pronunciation of phonemes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s