Phonics and Big Maths at Broughton Moor Primary School 24th November 2016

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

Does this make sense? It iz tiem too gow hoam sed v kator pilla. But iy doat wont 2 gow howm sed th butt or flie. Iy wot to staiy heyr.

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.

What is phonics? • Phonics is the link between letters and the sounds they make. Using a highly structured programme working through 6 progressive phases, children are taught: The full range of common letter/ sound correspondences. To hear separate sounds within words. To blend sounds together.

What are speech sounds? Although there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, there are more than 40 speech sounds.

Some definitions • Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound in a word. Grapheme – What we write to represent a sound/ phoneme – for some phonemes, this could be more than one letter. e.g. t ai igh

Oral blending Hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging (blending) them together to make a spoken word – no text is used. For example, when children hear /b/u/s, they will say bus. The skill is usually taught before blending using printed words.

Blending Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c- u- p, and blending them in the order which they are written, to read the word ‘cup’

Digraph Two letters which make one sound. A consonant digraph contains two consonants next to each other, but they make a single sound. e.g. sh, ck, th, ll A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel but the two letters still make a single sound e.g. ai ee ar oy

Examples of consonant digraphs ll ss zz hill mess fizz sh ch th ship chat thin ck ng qu chick sing quick

Examples of vowels digraphs (Vowel digraphs need to contain at least one vowel and make one sound.) ai ee igh oa oo rain meet might coat zoo ar or ur ow oi car for burn cow coin blow

Trigraph Three letters, which make one sound. Some words are more difficult to sound out and blend – children need to have understanding of the phoneme/ grapheme correspondences.

Nonsense words Purpose: To assess grapheme recognition To assess blending

Phase One Phase one comprises of seven aspects: Aspect One: Environmental Sounds Aspect Two: Instrumental Sounds Aspect Three: Body Percussion Aspect Four: Rhythm and Rhyme Aspect Five: Alliteration Aspect Six: Voice Sounds Aspect Seven: Oral Blending and segmenting

Phase Two Up to 6 weeks By the end of phase two children should be able to read some vc and cvc words. Children will also learn to read the words ‘the, to, go, I and no.’ Five sets of letters are introduced – one set per week. Children are taught reading and spelling throughout the week. Each session follows the same format. The activities used to teach vary and can be adapted. They are multisensory and appeal to different learning styles.

Phase Three (12 weeks ) Children are taught another 25 graphemes. Children continue to blend and segment CVC words for reading and spelling. Children will then use this knowledge to blend and segment two syllable words.

Phase Four (4 – 6 weeks) By Phase 4 children are able to represent each of 42 phonemes by a grapheme. Children will be able to blend and segment CVC words for reading and spelling. Phase 4 is consolidation of children’s knowledge. Children are encouraged to practice blending for reading and segmenting for spelling of adjacent consonants.

Phase Five Children will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes. They will learn alternative pronunciations of graphemes including split digraphs.

The Phonics Check In June all Year One children will be expected to undertake a phonics check. The aim is to check that a child is making progress in phonics. If a child has not reached the expected standard we will ensure that additional support is given to help your child progress in year 2.

Phase Six Children working at phase six can read hundreds of words automatically. Children can decode words quickly and silently. Children’s spelling will be phonemically accurate. During this phase children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.

Big Maths

How Does Big Maths Work? Primary Mathematics is one big interconnected subject. When we come to teach mathematics to children we break it down into very small manageable steps, teach each step in isolation, and then put it back together again. We are connecting each step to related surrounding steps as we go and showing the children how to use and apply existing skills and knowledge in new situations as well as developing the reasoning to justify this. Big Maths begins with a model of numeracy development that provides an innovative and highly effective way of looking at the Primary Mathematics curriculum. It cashes in on the nature of maths, using CLIC as a chronological framework for securing basic skills and on the logical steps of progression that sit naturally in mathematical progression, which we call Progress Drives.

The steps

Reception term 2

Daily sessions 25 minutes every day made up of: Counting Learn its It’s nothing new Calculation Improvements

Friday tests