Letters and Sounds Phonics Workshop October 2015

What we will be looking at Letters and Sounds resources What is Phase 1 Games children play in school that can be played at home Letter names and letter sounds, what is the difference?

What is Letters and Sounds Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills in It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. There are six overlapping phases.

What we focus on in Nursery Phase One Phase One of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. The ways in which adults model speaking and listening, interact and talk with children are critical to the success of Phase One activities.

Phase One is divided into seven aspects. Activities with the seven aspects are designed to help children: 1.Listen attentively 2.Enlarge their vocabulary 3.Speak confidently to adults and other children 4.Discriminate phonemes 5.Reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear, in order, all through the word 6.Use sound talk to segment words into phonemes.

Aspect 1- General Sound Discrimination- Environmental The aim of this aspect is to raise children’s awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game.

Games and Activities rs/soundgames/soundgames.html rs/soundgames/soundgames.html Type Sounds games early years in a search engine Letters and Sounds website Phase 1 Activities Listening Ears

Aspect 2- General Sound Discrimination- Instrumental Sounds This aspect aims to develop children’s awareness of sounds made by a various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Activity Suggestions 1.Making own instruments at home- as a group write down any materials that you think could be used to make instruments at home. 2.Which Instrument? Hide one set of instruments (made or real) and play them hidden under a blanket/behind a screen. Children to identify the sounds. 3.Adjust the volume. Loud and quiet, can use pictures for children to follow or copy another person.

Aspect 3- General Sound Discrimination- Body Percussion The aim of this aspect is to develop children’s awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Game Follow the sound around the circle

Aspect 4- Rhythm and Rhyme This aspect aims to develop children’s appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Activities and Games Can you clap the syllables in your name? Can you clap the syllables in these words: Dinosaur Hippopotamus Elephant Pencil Rhyming Pairs

Letter Sounds Letter Names What is the difference?

Aspect 5- Alliteration The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Activities and Games I spy with my little eye something beginning with the sound….. Musical Corners

Aspect 6- Voice Sounds The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's mouth and the adult sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Game- Metal Mike Have you got your Robot arms?

Aspect 7- Oral Blending and Segmenting In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills. To practice oral blending, the adult could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects For segmenting, the adult could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock. Remember when blending and segmenting words to use words that contain 2-3 sounds (phonemes).

Game- Try and say the sounds in these words

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Any questions? Thank you for coming! Remember there are lots of activities on the internet that you can use and enjoy with your child.