Phonics in Year One

What is phonics? Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully. They are taught how to: Recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes; Identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as ‘sh’ or ‘oo’ and Blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word. Children can then use this knowledge to ‘decode’ new words that they hear or see.

Phonics teaching in Year One The children have a 20 minute daily phonics lesson. Grouped by phonic ability. Groups are regularly assessed and there is flexibility to move children between groups. Introduction – revisit and review – teach – practise – apply – assess learning. There are 42 different sounds.

Phonic Phases Phase 2: Includes teaching of letter names, children begin to match upper and lower case letters and they are taught the rules about certain spelling patterns. Children are exposed to ‘alien words’ which will test their decoding and blending skills. They are taught other reading strategies. s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss Tricky words: the, to, go, no , I

Phonic Phases Phase 3: The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising of two letters (digraphs) eg: ‘oa’. Children continue to practise cvc blending and segmentation and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. Eg: cat, dog, mat. They will learn the letter names, learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words. j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er Tricky words: he, she, we, me, be, was, no, go, my, you, they, her, all.

Phonic Phases Phase 4: The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words. eg: ccvc – spot cvcc - lost eg: lunchbox, laptop, desktop

Phonic Phases Phase 5: children will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and the graphemes they already know, where relevant. When spelling words, they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings and words.

ay day oy boy wh when a_e make ou out ir girl ph photo e_e these ie tie ue blue ew new i_e like ea eat aw saw oe toe o_e home au Paul u_e rule

How to say the sounds …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwJx1NSineE&safe=true

Sound Buttons http://www.ictgames.com/soundButtons/index.html

Phonic Screening Check The check will contain a mix of real words and ‘non-words’ (or ‘nonsense words’ or ‘pseudo words‘ or ‘alien words’). Your child will be told before the check that there will be non- words that he or she will not have seen before. (They will be familiar with this). Non-words are important to include because words such as ‘vap’ or ‘jound’ are new to all children. Children cannot read the non-words by using their memory or vocabulary; they have to use their decoding skills. This is a fair way to assess their ability to decode.

Why Year One? Every Year 1 child in the country will be taking the statutory phonics screening check in June. The check is very similar to tasks the children already complete during phonics lessons and it will be done with the class teacher. The focus of the check is to ensure that all children can read by the end of Year 2. The Year 1 screening (mid point) will provide evidence to help teachers plan for Year 2.

What will the children do? The check will take 5 to 10 minutes to complete. They will be asked to ‘sound out’ a word and blend the sounds together. e.g. d-o-g – dog. The check will consist of 40 words and non-words. Children will be told if the word is a real or ‘alien’ word, with a corresponding alien image.

Some examples:

How will it be administered? Teachers will conduct all of the screening checks with the children. The children are familiar with this routine. The children will complete the check one to one in a quiet area of the school. We are not permitted to indicate to the children, at the time, whether they have correctly sounded out and / or blended the word.

The Results…? The children will be scored against a national standard (determined by the DfE). The pass mark has traditionally been 32 out of 40. We will inform you of the results during the summer term. If your child’s score falls below the national standard they will be supported and will complete the screening in Year 2. If your child is absent for the test, the school must administer the test to your child before the end of June.

How can you help? Encourage your child to use their knowledge of sounds to work out the words when reading and writing. Digraph: 2 letters making one sound. Eg: ‘cow’ the children should say this as c-ow and not c-o-w Trigraphs: 3 letters making one sound. Eg: ‘night’ the children should say this as n-igh-t and not n-i-g-h-t which does not sound like night. Split digraphs: 2 vowels with a consonant in between. Used to be known as the magic e! Spine - i_e home – o_e cube – u_e

How can you help? http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-4-games.html Children can practise their phonics by playing games online. They can choose phase 3, 4, or 5 Buried Treasure Poop deck Pirates Dragons’ den http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-4-games.html

How can you help? Remember: Phonics is not the only way you become a good reader. Continue to read with your child each night and encourage them to: Sound out the words and blend the sounds together. Re-read to check it makes sense, and use pictures for clues. Ask questions about the book. Most importantly ENJOY READING!