FS PARENTS MEETING PHONICS AND READING MEETINGS Thursday 23rd November 2-3pm and 7-8pm

WE AIM TO COVER IN THIS MEETING: Focus on Phonics – the key skill needed in children learning to Read. Phonic Activities. Focus on Reading. Reading Activities.

WHY TEACH PHONICS? The ability to read 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. e.g. cat can be sounded out for reading and for spelling. We use a synthetic scheme called ‘Letters and Sounds’ as our teaching resource.

WHY SYNTHETIC PHONICS? Sir Jim Rose, Rose Review of Reading 2006 “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 to make a word.

PHONICS CONSISTS OF: Identifying sounds/phonemes in spoken words. Recognising the common spellings of each phoneme. Blending phonemes into words for reading. Segmenting words into phonemes for spelling.

SOME DEFINITIONS EXPLAINED: Phoneme This is the smallest unit of sound in a word. How many phonemes can you hear in cat?

A grapheme: These are the letters that represent the phoneme. Children need to practise recognising the grapheme and saying the phoneme that it represents. The grapheme could be 1 letter, 2 letters or more! We often refer to these as sound buttons: t ai igh

TO HELP YOU REMEMBER: 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.

SAYING THE PHONEMES: Look at the Oxford Owl Website to show how the phonemes are spoken – www.oxfordowl.co.uk

BLENDING: c-u-p = cup f-l-a-g = flag This is recognising the letter sounds in a written word. For example: c-u-p = cup f-l-a-g = flag and merging or ‘blending’ them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.

SEGMENTING: lamp = l-a-m-p ‘Chopping Up’ the word to spell it out. The opposite of blending. Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m , sh-o-p) and writing down letters for each sound (phoneme) to form the words - him and shop. bag = b-a-g lamp = l-a-m-p

ONCE CHILDREN ARE GOOD WITH SINGLE PHONEMES… DIGRAPHS – 2 letters that make 1 sound ch ll ss zz oa ai TRIGRAPHS – 3 letters that make 1 sound igh ear air

COUNTING THE PHONEMES IN WORDS: shelf = sh – e – l – f = 4 phonemes dress = d - r - e – ss = 4 phonemes sprint = s – p – r – i – n – t = 6 phonemes string = s – t – r – i – ng = 5 phonemes

TRICKY WORDS: Words that are not phonically decodeable e.g. was, the, I Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become decodeable once we have learned the harder phonemes e.g. out, these

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.

PHASE 1: General Sound discrimination - Environmental sounds General Sound discrimination - Instrumental sounds General Sound discrimination - Body percussion Rhythm and Rhyme Alliteration Voice sounds Oral blending and segmenting

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 graphemes (letters), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /sh/ as in sh- o -p. They may be using pictures or hand movements to help them remember these. Learning to read and spell VC (vowel consonant) words eg. in an on is and CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words eg. cat, dog, hop, peg, win, fun.

PHASE 2 Sounds are introduced in sets Set 1: s a t p Set 2: i n m d Set 3: g o c k Set 4: ck e u r Set 5: h b f ff l ll ss

PHASE 3: The purpose of this phase is to: teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters (digraphs) for example, ‘oa’ as in boat and introduce some trigraphs too. practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light. learn all the 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.

Your turn! Phonic Activities: Phase 1 – Aspect 4 Rhythm and Rhyme: Have a go at the Rhyming Bingo game and the ‘Odd one out ‘ Rhyming game. Phase 1 – Aspect 5 Alliteration: Have a go at the ‘Bertha the bus goes to the zoo’ game. Try writing a sentence with all the words beginning with the same letter. Phase 3 – Segmenting: Segment words and count total phonemes. Segment non-words

FINALLY ON PHONICS: REMEMBER: Phonics is not the only thing needed to become a fluent reader. Phonics is a tool to help your child learn to read but there is so much more........

READING......

Why learn to read? “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” — Walt Disney “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King “To learn to read is to light a fire.”  — Victor Hugo - Les Miserables

You as a reader? When do you read? Have you got a favourite book/author? What experiences of reading have you had? Do you read for pleasure or because you have to? Do you read to relax? Loosing yourself in a book – what feelings does it give you? What does it do for your well-being? When was the last time you couldn’t put a book down? FINALLY - What kind of reader is your child?

YOUR ROLE IN READING - As parents or carers you are your child’s most influential teacher with an incredibly important role to play in helping your child to read. You are their role model so your role is absolutely key. If you love reading then your child will love reading. If you say the book is exciting they will agree. If you think the characters are interesting they will agree with you. And so on….

We want to encourage children to read for pleasure. A love of Reading - Our aim is to create children who will become able independent readers. We want to encourage children to read for pleasure. “Children who say that they enjoy reading and who read for pleasure in their own time do better at school. Reading for enjoyment is positively associated with reading attainment and writing ability’” (OECD: Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development, 2002) As parents or carers you are your child’s most influential teacher with an incredibly important role to play in helping your child to read.

Reading with your child - Book Mark with 13 tips! Demonstration of how to read with your child.

Reading What to talk about? IT IS JUST AS IMPORTANT THAT A CHILD UNDERSTANDS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE STORY AS THE IMPORTANCE OF READING ITSELF. Talk about: Emotions and feelings of characters. The weather and clothing worn by characters. Likes and dislikes about the book and what is happening in the book. Predict what might happen next. Link the events in the story to their own experiences, past, present and future events. Who are the characters? (names, description, place in the family and where they live) Where does the story take place? How would you change the story if you were the author?

Your turn! Look through the packs of books and try and answer the questions together. There are some pre-reading books with no words, early reading books, picture books and information books.

HANDOUTS AND INFORMATION SHEETS DATES FOR YOUR DIARY: READING WORKSHOPS FOR YEAR R CHILDREN – Wednesday 17th January and Thursday 18th January 2018 MATHS AND WRITING INFORMATION SESSIONS – Thursday 22nd March 2-3pm and 7-8pm HANDOUTS AND INFORMATION SHEETS Please help yourself to these before you leave.