PIXIES HILL PRIMARY SCHOOL Presentation on the teaching of Phonics Thursday 25th September 2014

Objectives To understand why the teaching of Phonics is an important part of learning to read and write. To understand how we teach Phonics at Pixies Hill School. To feel more confident about helping your child to learn to read and write at home.

How children learn to read… Whole word recognition Use of analogy Use of context/picture clues Syntactic knowledge Use of phonic knowledge to blend and segment words for reading

Why Teach Phonics? Rose Review Introduction of ‘Letters and Sounds’ strategy. Strategy now regarded as the most important strategy to help children learn to read and write at an early age.

How do we teach Phonics at Pixies Hill School? We follow the ‘Letters and Sounds’ strategy which informs teachers about which sounds to teach and in what order, it provides ideas and games to help the children learn those sounds. At Pixies Hill School we use a combination of teaching materials but in the Foundation Stage it is initially taught using the Jolly Phonics Scheme.

Different Phases and Stages Phase 1 – Nursery age. This phase is about distinguishing different sounds. Phase 2 – is the introduction of the alphabet and some digraphs. Phase 3 – is the continuation of teaching digraphs and trigraphs. Phase 4 – is about applying this phonic knowledge to reading and writing and introduces polysyllabic words.

Different Phases and Stages Phase 5 – Sees the introduction of alternative sounds eg. ur, ir, er. Phase 6 – Spelling accurately becomes more important and introduces suffixes, prefixes etc.

Jolly Phonics Scheme The Jolly Phonics Scheme is an taught using an interactive whiteboard programme which gives the children the correct pronunciation for each phoneme. It provides the children with a mnemonic and action which helps the children remember the sounds. It also gives the child a story and a song to practise which helps embed the sound further.

The Importance of Pronunciation Sounds need to be spoken softly, quickly and without adding an ‘uh’ sound at the end. If phonemes are not sounded correctly it is difficult for the children to re-blend sounds into words so that they can read them. Video clip: Letters and sounds video related to teaching of articulation of phonemes: vowels and consonants. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s

Robot Talking When children are learning to read, we encourage them to sound out words by pretending to be robots – Reception Sound Button Fingers – Year 1 and 2 Try sound talking these words: Cat Fish Shop Trainers

Quickwrite Activity Now we are going to spend a few minutes practising blending and segmenting using phoneme frames to write the words.

TRICKY WORDS Some words can not be sounded out using phonics and we call these tricky words. Children need to be able to recognise these words and say them without sounding them out ‘sight words’ Eg. the, to, go, no, I, said, was.

How can I help my child? Try and teach your children to sound the phonemes correctly – don’t add an ‘uh’. Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ a word if they struggle to read it. If they are confident at sounding out and can read most words in their books then ask your child if they can read the whole word without sounding it out. Remind them to use picture clues and think about the whole sentence – they can often guess from the context. Play phonic games: www.letters_and_sounds.com www.phonics.play

Any Questions? You now have an opportunity to ask questions – or write them down to be handed in at the end of the session. Thank you for coming please can you complete the evaluation form.