Phonics in EYFS

The Reading Strategies Contextual Grammatical Graphic Phonic

The Reading Strategies All important – need them all to be an effective reader Phonics – fastest results for most children Evidence based approach – national strategy, phonics assessment end Y1

Our Phonics Scheme Letters and Sounds www.letters-and-sounds.com

Rationale Learn the sound made by letters before the name of the letter Learn letters in an order where you can make words as soon as possible Recognise that some words cannot be blended (read with phonics knowledge) and need to be learnt by sight Link the sound to the letter in listening, speaking, reading and writing

First set of letters s a t p i n Learn to read these sounds wherever they are in the word, e.g. s always says s, whether sat, cats, Learn to blend the sounds into words – at, sat, sap

First ‘tricky’ words I Was He She Me We Talk about why they are tricky. Learn them by sight.

Progresssion through KS1 New letter sets – e.g. gock New tricky words – said, went Less common letter combinations – ch, sh Vowel digraphs and trigraphs Consonant digraphs and trigraphs Blends Alternate spellings of a sound – ai, a, ay, a-e Regular and irregular tense endings – ed, ing Learning spelling patterns

The Challenges Most children can identify the sound – can hear and say Most children can make the link to the letter by the end of EYFS Most children find it hard to BLEND individual sounds into words and need to practise, practise, practise! Most children find it harder still to write the letter and segment words for spelling, e.g. I a-m a c –a –t.

What might help Making a sounds scrapbook to refer to regularly – helps child take ownership Blending – magnetic letters, scraps of paper, foam letters, letters in chalk etc Using free web–based resources, e.g. Letters and Sounds site has games, BBC also good Jolly Phonics songs and actions Alphablocks – TV, DVD and magazine produced by BBC makes blending very easy to understand. Cursive writing practise – many free sheets available online, including sparklebox.

Top Tip Try to say the smallest sound possible, to avoid adding other letters to your sound, e.g. ‘u’ not ‘uh’, ‘d’ not ‘durr’ Try listening online to how the sounds should be said, e.g. on Mumsnet http://www.mumsnet.com/learning/phonics/listen-to-the-44-phonic-sounds

Jargon busting Phoneme – unit of sound, can be more than one letter (e.g. s, or ch, or ai) Grapheme – how the sound is represented in writing Blend – letters that make their sound very close together or blended e.g. bl, sl Also to blend phonemes (to put sounds together to make words) Digraph – two letters together making a new phoneme, e.g. ch, sh Trigraph – three letter phoneme igh, Segment – to take a word apart into the separate phonemes for spelling

Finally No shortcuts – you will need to work at it Most children love phonics lessons Try to link the writing (or at least making the letter shape with the arm or finger) as soon as possible Thank you for your support!