Parent’s Guide to Phonics Improve your understanding of how we teach Phonics to help your child excel at reading and writing! 

How many of the 44 sounds do you know? Think of 1 letter 1 sound! Thinks of 2 letters 1 sound! Do you know any split digraphs? Quick audit – share 44 phonemes

Aims of the workshop: To give an overview of Synthetic phonics To share the associated terminology To inform how we teach Phonics using Letters and Sounds To learn how to correctly articulate the phonemes To familiarise ourselves with graphemes and alternative graphemes for phonemes To share an overview of the 6 Phases To understand the importance of Phonics in improving children’s ability to read and write

What is Phonics? Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending Knowledge of the alphabetic code Could do activity of - make the words you can with different ways of saying /ae/ – how many words are there?

Phonemes and graphemes 01/05/08 Phonemes and graphemes Terminology phoneme smallest unit of sound in a word grapheme a letter or sequence of letters that represents a phoneme

Enunciation Teaching phonics requires a technical skill in enunciation. Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely. Get delegates to find any letters which can be done in an elongated fashion!! Illustrate this for consultants – for example demonstrate how most consonants should be pronounced in a continuous manner – e.g. ssssss mmmmmm llllllll nnnnnn shshshsh rrrrrrr zzzzzzzz vvvvvvv Some can’t be said like this (e.g. /c/ /t/ /p/ /b/ /d/ and /g/) but /c/, /t/ and /p/ should be enunciated without the voice. Phonemes wwwwww and yyyyyyyy are not easy but can be attempted. Cannot overestimate the importance of this – many errors spring from incorrect enunciation e.g. teachers reporting that children confuse ‘ch’ and ‘tr’. If the ‘ch’ is enunciated correctly, as one phoneme, rather than ‘chur’and ‘tr’ clearly as 2, there is far less likelihood of confusion. Note for presenters. Regional pronunciation issues, in case these are raised by consultants. The PNS line as expressed in a position paper on teaching phonics is Many of the sounds (particularly vowel sounds) can vary slightly according to accent, but they are generally consistent within the speech of an individual and recognisable by others who may pronounce them slightly differently.

Pronouncing Phonemes 1. f l m n r s sh v th z 2. c p t ch h 3. b d g w qu y j Simple and complex charts DVD - Phase 4 Articulation 1 = continuous 2 = unvoiced 3 = is voiced - put finger on voice box to check Activity a )delegates work individually, trying them out. b) Flash cards to each group to try out the sounds. Sue’s Phoneme/ Grapheme Charts c) Creating a musical score of phonemes for someone else to follow. DVD – articulation phase 4

Phonic Articulation DVD Phase 2 : Articulating Phonemes Once all delegates have listened and watched ‘Phase 2: Articulating Phonemes’ of DVD then articulate together as a group before practising with talk partners.

Simple Speed Sounds These are our new Phoneme and Grapheme Correspondence Charts as devised by Ruth Miskin  JH to model all sounds as seen on chart and explain use of terms ‘bouncy’ and ‘stretchy’.

Complex Speed Sounds Go through phonemes and show alternative graphemes.

Blending and Segmentation 01/05/08 Blending and Segmentation Blending Merging the individual phonemes together to pronounce a word. To read unfamiliar words a child must recognise (sound out) each grapheme, not each letter, then merge the phonemes together to make a word. Segmentation Hear and say the individual phonemes within words. In order to spell, children need to segment a word into its component phonemes and choose a grapheme to represent each phoneme.

Oral segmenting & blending Watch Time: Phase 2 Oral segmenting & blending Watch Oral blending & segmenting of DVD Phase 2

01/05/08 Key Terminology Digraph Two letters, which make one phoneme. A consonant digraph contains 2 consonants: sh ck th ll A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel: ai ee ar oy Consonant digraphs are not identified as, in CVC words. Ship is ‘digraph vowel consonant’ CVC. Church is ‘consonant digraph vowel consonant digraph’ CVC.

01/05/08 Key Terminology Trigraph Three letters, which make one phoneme. igh dge

01/05/08 Key Terminology Split digraph A digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent – e.g. ‘make’.

How to use sound buttons How do sound buttons help children with segmenting and blending? Sing/ thing/ throw/ bird/ bee/ bench/ chicken/ green/ snail/ fight/ bear/ fuzz/

Segmenting Practise hop hope think string sprint shelf WORD PHONEMES Point out that there is a single final ‘l’, ‘f’, ‘k’ after a consonant (these letters only double after a short vowel). Another common mistake is to include non CCVCs/CVCCs in work on adjacent consonants. These are words which are too difficult for children to blend and segment at this stage, as they contain phoneme-grapheme correspondences they haven’t yet learned. E.g.. Refer to P74 to go through things like ‘ear’

01/05/08 Consonant Digraphs ll ss ff zz hill, mess, puff, fizz sh ch th wh ship, chat, thin, whip ng qu ck sing, quick …therefore these are CVC words containing consonant digraphs. CVC refers to phonemes not letters. The above are CVC words containing consonant digraphs. Therefore duck is a CVC word /d/ /u/ /ck/ chip is a CVC word /ch/ /i/ /p/ Sheep is a CVC word /sh/ee/p/ 18

Examples of CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC 01/05/08 Examples of CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC b l a ck s t r ea m c c v c c c c v c f ou n d b l a n k c v c c c c v c c ACTIVITY Consider with reference to the above slide, what could be the most common errors practitioners may make when blending and segmenting these words. Synthetic phonics focuses on the smallest units of sound in a word. There are usually 2 or 3 phonemes within a number of consecutive (adjacent) consonants. e.g. strap contains five phonemes /s/ /t/ /r/ /a/ /p/ ‘Str’ is not a phoneme ‘Ap’ is not a phoneme Children need to be taught to blend and segment these phonemes within CCVC and CVCC words. Teachers should not be teaching ‘sl’, ‘sm’, ‘sn’ etc as units of sound which need to be learned individually – this takes far too long, is unnecessary and doesn’t improve children’s spelling and reading skills as quickly. The key here is applying the generic skill of blending to the phonemes in the word (using the taught knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences), from left to right in the order in which they are recorded in the word. 19

CVCC oral segmentation and spelling Watch Time: Phase 4 CVCC oral segmentation and spelling

Model for daily teaching of phonics skills and knowledge 01/05/08 Model for daily teaching of phonics skills and knowledge REVISIT AND REVIEW recently and previously learned phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and blending and segmenting skills as appropriate TEACH new phoneme-grapheme correspondences; skills of blending and segmenting PRACTISE Cyclic for a reason. What are the benefits to this cycle? Discuss as a group. new phoneme-grapheme correspondences; skills of blending and segmenting APPLY new knowledge and skills while reading/writing

Teaching of Tricky Words Tricky words otherwise referrred to as high frequency words or sight words are those common words that children need for reading and writing that cannot be decoded e.g. said sounded out is s/e/d. Phase 3: Practising & Teaching ‘tricky’ words

Jolly Songs & Actions The ‘Jolly Phonics’ knowledge children have from their Reception years is being built upon also with some teaching materials used; notably the Jolly songs and actions.

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check All Year 1 pupils will undertake the screening check in June 2014. It is an oral check of their ability to segment and blend as well as identify the correct graphemes they have been taught. Any Year 2 children who failed to meet the pass mark of 32/40 last June will retake the check. Delegates in talk partners to discuss before feedback

Any questions… Please feel free to ask anything that I have failed to outline or that you wish for more clarification on 