Phonics at Katherine Semar Infant School October 2013

Six Areas of Learning in Foundation Stage

Literacy is broken down into six areas

Phase 1- Nursery/Reception Phase 2- Reception Phase 3- Reception Phase 4- Reception Phase 5- Year 1 Phase 6- Year 2 Linking sounds and letters Children progress through these stages at their own pace – some take longer to get there! This is a continual process from Foundation through Key Stage 1 and beyond.

Before your child is ready to read – they must have lots of talking opportunities. If they can’t say it, they won’t be able to write it - poor language skills will make reading and writing very difficult.

Time for talk! In the car, in the bath, reading stories, at the dinner table - encourage your child to listen to others, share their opinion, describe what they can see. It is important that correct language is modelled and correct pronunciation of words – e.g, the not du or v. Time for rhyme Read and encourage your child to join in with nursery rhymes and poems. Play rhyming games – make up nonsense rhymes using your child’s name such as ‘Here comes Hattie, Pattie, Mattie’.

19 phonemes are taught Blend phonemes and segment words Read ‘vc’ and ‘cvc’ words Tricky words

Phoneme- sounds of letter Grapheme - ‘shape’ of a letter Blend- putting sounds together to make a word for reading eg. c-a-t cat Segment - Pulling a word apart into it’s sounds for writing eg. cat c-a-t VC and CVC-VC is vowel consonant words - CVC is consonant vowel consonant words

Pronunciation... no ‘uh’ at the end - soft voice (p, s, m) Action and sound... Based on multi-sensory approach Structure... Twice a day – letter sounds, blending, segmenting, tricky words, applying skills to real reading and writing contexts.

s – a – t – p i – n - m – d g – o – c – k ck – e – u – r h – b – f - l A good phonic understanding is one of the key foundations of being a good reader and writer.

Words that you ‘just have to know’ through on-sight recognition Spot the words in books and in the environment. Wiggle fingers when you hear the word. Matching pairs game Daily practise

25 more phonemes are taught (most are letter combinations i.e two letters which make one sound – sh, th, ng) Read and spell ‘cvc’ words Letter names – alphabet song Spell tricky words

42 graphemes are known Consolidate reading and spelling of tricky words Consonant clusters

Practise oral blending - use sound talk– its time for b – e – d, let’s put your shoes on your f – ee — t, shall we have some bread and j – a – m? Sing nursery rhymes and play with rhyme – cat, fat, bat I spy...emphasising the initial sound Make collections of things beginning with the same letter Stretch out words slowly, helping your child to identify each sound in turn. Practise recognising tricky words. Discuss the pictures and language used in books to help develop your child’s comprehension skills.

Stretch out the word slowly, helping your child to identify each sound in turn. Use magnetic letters to make words. Sound them out to check. Practise letter formation – pencil and paper, white boards, in flour, foam, glitter!! Writing shopping lists Messages for people (post-its) Encourage your child to write the sounds they can hear in words. Accuracy in this is more important than accuracy of the word itself at this stage. I.e. They may write ‘it’ for ‘eat’ or ‘is’ for ‘ice’.