Letters and Sounds Phonics information for parents What is Letters and Sounds ?

Introduction The ability to read and write well is a vital skill for all children, paving the way for an enjoyable and successful school experience.

Children’s spoken language supports reading and writing In order to make a good start in reading and writing, children need to have an adult listen to them and talk to them. Speaking and listening are the foundations for reading and writing. Books are a rich source of new words for your child; words you would not use in everyday conversations appear in books. Children need to have a wide vocabulary to understand the meaning of books, so read aloud and share books as often as you can. They will enjoy it and it will be useful to them when they come across these words in their own reading later on.

Letters and Sounds Letters and Sounds is divided into six phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. Children have time to practise and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’, which are words with spellings that are unusual. It is taught using a multi-sensory approach (magnetic letters, space hoppers, through mini-games etc)

Phase 1 Teachers plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys and to sounds in spoken language. Teachers teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs. This helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.

Phase 2 In this phase children will continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, including ‘sound-talk’. They will also be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /ll/ as in b-e-ll. They may be using pictures or hand movements to help them remember these. VC and CVC words

Phase 3 The purpose of this phase is to: teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them read and write words in phrases and sentences.

Phase 4 & 5 Phase 4 & 5 will be explained at a later stage when your child approaches these stages. There is an overview in your pack just so you can see where your child progresses to.

Mark making Using the card in your pack take it out and write your name on it!! (activity for parents) Research proves that tracing over letters is not a good way to develop writing skills. Once children have grasped a good pincer grip it is fine to practice using the tracing method, but not until this point. The best thing to do is to encourage gross motor skills (see handout) Muscles develop from core outwards so children’s finger muscles are not fully developed till they are 5. The larger the movement the better! Using ribbons, scarves, writing large letters in the air etc. Explain finger strong activities.

Home activity books and play club bags. Children will receive a home activity book this week. This book is all about carrying out a practical activity with your child (not about sitting and making them write!) sometimes there will be rhymes for you to share, letter sheets for you to find objects, Religion activities, number problems for you to solve. Don’t worry if you don’t get time to do it, but if you could write a comment that would be great! It will go home on a Friday and you need to bring back into nursery on a Tuesday. Also at some point this year we will give out ‘play club bags’ these are fun activities to share with your child. These bags are activities linked to phase 1 letters and sounds. We will be giving the bags out a group at a time.