Phonics Julie Phillippo

You will learn: Why children are taught to read and write using phonics What phonics is all about How to pronounce some of the sounds Ideas for practising phonics at home with your child in a fun way

Why phonics? Government requirement Gives children a way of decoding the marks on paper we call writing The alternative – rely on visual memory. (Seeing a word and remembering its shape)

Phoneme A unit of sound Phonics is about linking sounds to written letters (graphemes) Spoken English is divided into about 42 phonemes. Phonics schemes are based on these 42 phonemes.

Teaching order Children are taught the phonemes in a certain order. s a t p i n The first group of phonemes allows them to make a number of CVC words. They can then start making their own words straight away.

Letters and Sounds – Reception Set 1: s atp Set 2:i nmd Set 3:g ock Set 4:ck eur Set 5:h bf,ffl,llss Set 6:j vwx(ks) Set 7:y z,zzqu(kw) Check pronunciation of each phoneme

Segmentation and Blending Children are taught to segment words. That means that they break them up into their individual phonemes/ units of sound. e.g. c-a-t They are also taught to blend phonemes together to make words. (Sounding out a word.) This helps with reading.

Digraphs Some sounds are represented by two letters. These are called digraphs. e.g. sh, ch, ng, oo Some schemes also introduce children to trigraphs. igh, ear, ure

Digraphs and Trigraphs ch - chipar - farm sh -shopor – for th – thin/thenur - hurt ure - sureow - cow ai – rainee - feet ng - singoi - coin igh - nightair - fair oo – book, spooner - corner Check pronunciation

Phoneme frame Segment the word. Write one phoneme in each square.

fish wing f-i-sh w-i-ng

frog f–r–o–g brown b-r-ow-n

flag f-l-a-g s-t-air stair

night n-igh-t

Nursery – phase 1 Children at nursery are taught to hear the phonemes first. They are generally not expected to write them in the early stages. Children spend a lot of time playing with sounds in nursery, so that by the time they get to reception, they are ready for phase 2.

Reception Children begin to pronounce the sounds themselves in response to seeing them written down. (phase 2) They are then taught the names of each letter of the alphabet. (phase 3) By phase 4 they are learning to blend adjacent consonants. e.g. fl, bl, sp, st Show video clip: Teaching phoneme/ grapheme correspondence h,g,b

Year 1 – phase 5 Children are taught the alternative spellings for the long vowel sounds and split digraphs. ie / y (tie sky)

Phase 6 - Year 2 Children develop their knowledge of the English spelling system. e.g. prefixes, suffixes, silent letters

Tricky words There are a number of common words in English which do not work phonetically. Children are taught that these are ‘tricky’ words and they learn to sight read them. e.g. phase 2 – the, to, I, go, no

When talking to your child, use the sound the letter makes, not the name. ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘a’.’ Later in reception, children are taught the names of each letter. (The alphabet.)