How do we teach phonics We use phonic resources that have been developed for a scheme called Read Write inc, They group the sounds into sets. There are 3 sets and they will cover the common graphemes for each sound.

Set 1 and Set 2 Set 1 includes all of the letters of the alphabet, although they are not taught in that order (see printout) It also includes the common consonant digraphs: sh, th, ch, qu, ng and nk We only learn the short vowel sound – a, e, i, o, u

Set 2 and Set 3 Set 2 introduces us to the long vowel sounds. We only learn one grapheme for each: ay, ee, igh, ow, oo, oo, ar, or, air, ir, ou, oy. In set 3 we learn the other graphemes for each vowel sound, e.g. for ay, we also learn ai and a_e

Stretchy and Bouncy Pure sounds can be either stretchy or bouncy (see handout). The bouncy sounds are very short: a, d, t, i, p, g, o, c, k, u, b, e, h, j, y, w, ch, qu, x Stretchy sounds are drawn out. All of the other letters are stretchy, e.g. m, s, z, ay, ee.

Learning set 1 Most of the set 1 sounds are single letter sounds. For each letter children learn a word that begins with the letter and a saying to help them form it, e.g. aaaaa apple – round the apple down the leaf. (see handout)

Learning set 2 and 3 Each vowel sound has a phrase to help you learn it, e.g. ow – blow the snow

Reading words After learning a new sound and the grapheme, we practise reading words with that grapheme in, e.g. ay – play, tray, delay We then try and read ‘alien words’ with the grapheme in. These words are made up and are supposed to name an alien.

Why do we read alien words? Phonics is a skill we require to work out words that we do not know. For a test of phonic knowledge to be effective, we must make sure that children do not know all of the words or it is a test only of reading. It can cause problems for children who are confident readers but try to make sense of the word and offer a ‘real’ word as an answer.

Reading words To read a word, we need to first recognise if there are any digraphs or trigraphs in it. We use dots and swipes to show whether sounds are working on their own or with other letters, e.g. zoom

Can you spot the digraphs and trigraphs in the following sharp launch joiner grate

Blending Now that we know which letters are working together, we can read each sound. The next vital skill is to be able to blend the sound together. We do this by pushing each sound onto our fingers and building up the speed so that the sounds can run into each other.

Can you spot the digraphs and trigraphs in the following sharp launch joiner grate

Spelling Although the Phonic Screening Check only tests word reading, phonics is also very important for spelling unknown words. It is much more difficult because of the number of graphemes for some sounds, but we encourage children to spell in a ‘phonetically plausible’ way. e.g. beekoz is a good attempt at because.