Phonics and Spelling October 2015

Aims of the Evening: * Overview of Early Years Phonics * How phonics progresses in Year 1 * Why we have changed our spelling system from year 2. * What spelling looks like at Year 6 SATS. * Questions and answers….

* Early phonics in Oak and Ash classes include many different types of listening games. Such as, memory games, following instructions and identifying the initial sound of an object. * We then begin teaching the single letter sounds, s,a,t,p,i,n through song, modelling the action and practical activities. * It is important to say the sounds correctly, for example the letter ‘s’ is ‘ssss’ not ‘suh’.

* We have introduced dough gym this year and it has been received positively by the children. This is because it is such good fun!! * The following photos will give you some ideas of how to help your child at home with forming their letters.

* Revisit and review - The children will play a quick fire game to practise something they have learned before and help build their confidence. * Teach - The children will be taught a new phoneme/grapheme or a new skill - this will be taught in a fun multisensory way and may well involve: songs, actions, pictures, puppets, writing giant letters in the air.

Practise - The children play fast, fun games to practise the new thing they have just learned. This might be a carpet based or a computer based game. Show phonics play game Apply - The children will have a quick go at reading or writing sentences that involve the new thing they have just learned.

 The checks consist of 40 words and non-words that your child will be asked to read one-on-one with a teacher. Non-words (or nonsense words, or pseudo words) are a collection of letters that will follow phonics rules your child has been taught, but don’t mean anything – your child will need to read these with the correct sounds to show that they understand the phonics rules behind them. The 40 words and non-words are divided into two sections – one with simple word structures of three or four letters, and one with more complex word structures of five or six letters. The teacher

* New National Curriculum emphasis is for: children to continue to learn spelling rules and patterns as started in early phonics. * “Increasingly pupils also need to understand the role of morphology and etymology.” * To understand relationships between meaning and spelling. For example, understanding the relationship between medical and medicine may help pupils to spell the /s/ sound in medicine with the letter ‘c’.

* The role of the teacher is to teach the rule and the exceptions to it. This will happen in a designated lesson once a week as part of SPaG. * The rule (and examples) will be sent home and the children will then be encouraged to go home and generate their own list of words that follow this rule – your support in this would be greatly appreciated and necessary too. * These words will be shared as part of a class display and misconceptions / errors / meanings discussed as necessary. * The children will have a whole week, including a weekend, to work on the rule and they will then be tested on a selection of these words in the form of a very short dictation exercise.

* All year group spelling expectations are broken down and explained fully - available online as part of the appendix of the New National Curriculum. *

* Examples words * tapping * field * judge * fracture * assistant * potential * anxious