At St Luke’s Primary School Welcome to At St Luke’s Primary School Sept 2015 Thank you all for coming this afternoon- great to see so many of you here to find out about our phonics programme and how your children are learning to read and write. Jolly Phonics provides a systematic method for teaching children to read and write. It is a synthetic phonics programme: This means the children are taught to read by ‘synthesising’ (which is blending) the letter sounds together. By blending the letter sounds together, the children can work out unknown words themselves, rather than being asked to memorise words. In this presentation, we will look at : The principles of Phonics. The stages children go through to learn to read and write well - and confidently. How providing additional support at home can help children to achieve their best.

5 Basic Skills 1. Learning the letter sounds 2. Learning letter formation 3. Blending 4. Segmenting 5. Tricky words 5 Basic Skills There are 5 basic skills covered in a systematic, synthetic phonics approach Learning the letter sounds.(s, a, t, p) Learning letter formation. Blending sounds for reading. Segmenting words for spelling. Learning to read and write tricky words. These skills are taught every day in our phonics and literacy sessions.

Letter Sounds s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f, ff l, ll ss j v w x y z, zz qu ch sh th ng ai ee igh oa oo ar ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er Letter Sounds This is the order we teach the sounds. This is why reading is complex There are 44 different sounds in the English language, but only 26 letters which are divided into groups. The order in which the letter sounds are taught go from the simplest to the more complex. The first group of letters were chosen because you can make more simple, three-letter words than any other combination of 6 letters. Teaching the sounds in this order enables the children to start blending and reading words quite quickly. This is hugely motivating for them. ‘sat’, tap, pin, ,at, mat, tin, in.’ Letter names Initially, only the letter sounds are taught, with the letter names coming in later. This helps to prevent the children getting muddled between the sound and the name.

Mr Thorne does phonics Learning to say the letter sounds correctly (the phonemes) is very important. Here, Mr Thorne gives us a helping hand! Just an example. You can find him on youtube!

Digraphs and Trigraphs (two or three letters making one sound) ch sh th ng ai ee oa oo ar or ur ow oi er ear air igh Digraphs So in English there are 44 sounds but only 26 letters. This means that some sounds have to be written with two letters and some sounds have to be written with three letters. Two letters together that make one sound are called digraphs and three letters that make one sound are called trigraphs. The ones on the screen are the first to be taught to the children and alternative diagraphs come later. Activity Point to each digraph and ask everyone to call out the sound. You can provide a word for each digraph yourself, or ask for suggestions. For example: /ch/ chip /ar/ farm /sh/ shop /or/ for /th/ thin/then /ng/ring /ai/rain /ee/feet /igh/night /oa/boat /oo/boot/look /ar/car /or/core /ur/ hurt /ow/ cow /oi/ coin /ear/ dear /air/ fair /ure/ pure /er/sister

Storylines and Actions Learning the /s/ sound Action: Weave your hand like a snake, making an ‘s’ shape, saying ssssss Storylines and Actions The first of the 5 basic skills is learning the letter sounds: Action • Each letter sound has an action and this multi-sensory approach helps the children remember the letter sounds more easily. Each sound and action is introduced through a story. Here is a video of your children demonstrating the actions to sounds we have learnt so far.

Letter Formation On the board In the air Multisensory rehearsal The next part of the lesson involves the second of the basic 5 skills: showing the children the shape of the letter. Multi-sensory approach A multi-sensory approach is used here too. The children can: hear it orally see it written on the board Say it and write it in the air with their finger We then move on to write the letter in a number of ways- using chalks on the playground, writing in shaving foam, using ribbons in the air, writing in the sand, mud trays, paint etc. Getting it right It is important to get the formation correct from the beginning before any bad habits develop.

dog Blending for reading Reading (blending) Blending is the third of the 5 basic skills: When children read, we encourage them to sound out the word and then blend the sounds together in order to say the whole word. For example, d-o-g is ‘dog’ The first stage in learning to blend is to listen for the word when the teacher or parent says the sounds. For example, if I sound out ‘s-u-n’ I would want to see if the child can hear the word ‘sun.’ By practising this first stage lots, we discover if children can hear the initial, medial and final sounds in words and therefore whether they can say the whole word back to us. Activity Choose simple words from the picture on screen and call out the sounds. Ask everyone to listen for the word and call it out. (Sample set of words: b-oy, f-i-sh, ch-i-p) In the beginning a little practice is needed most days. Children who can hear immediately that s-u-n is ‘sun’ tend to have a naturally good ear for sounds. They rarely have problems with learning to blend sounds by themselves. With practice, all children become successful. However, it does take longer for some, and these children find learning to read a little more difficult. Doing this type of activity at home is hugely beneficial. We move on from this activity to children pointing at the sounds in words themselves and in their reading books and saying each sound, then blending the sounds together.

The cat is on a mat. Blending for reading In our phonics and literacy lessons, we are starting to read short sentences. Demonstrate the way in which children will read this sentence. Do not worry if, at first, your child cannot hear the whole word. Encourage them to sound the word out a couple of times and then demonstrate this for them. Don’t just tell them the word, but show them the process of sounding out the whole word and blending the sounds together. Then ask them to have another go. If your child is finding it difficult to hear the whole word, keep practising the game at home of you sound talking a word and your child saying the word back to you and progress will come quicker.

Segmenting for spelling h-a-t Segmenting for spelling is the fourth of the 5 basic skills. This is all about listening for the sounds in the words as we write them. For example, the sounds in the word ‘hat’ are h-a-t. Writing simple words becomes easy for children when they can hear the sounds in words and know how to write each letter. We do lots of practise of the children looking at pictures and objects and saying the word. Then they would break it down into the sounds they hear and write each one in turn. We use robot arms to help them break down the word into the individual sounds. We start by writing the initial sound we hear and gradually, we build up to hearing all the sounds in a word and writing them down. The children who have a naturally good ear for sounds quickly develop this skill. For others, it can take a little longer but the children do all get there with practise. To practise this skill, say the whole word and ask children to break it down using their robot arms.

Pencil Hold Tripod grip Pencil Hold Tripod grip The ‘tripod’ type of pencil hold makes it easier for children to write. They need to learn that: The pencil goes between the thumb and the first finger. The next finger stops the pencil falling down. The last two fingers are not needed and should be tucked away. It is helpful to encourage your children to use this pencil hold.

the /s/ Sound Sheet from The Phonics Handbook. Sound Sheets This is the /s/ Sound Sheet from The Phonics Handbook. Sound Sheets At your child’s home visit, I gave you a pack of sheets of those sounds we are learning in the first half term. These: Demonstrate the action for the letter sound. Give some words that have the new letter sound in them. You can play an important role in encouraging your child to practise the letter sounds by going through the sheets and asking them to say the sounds they see. Some children learn the letter sounds very easily, while others find it a little more difficult so the more they can see the sound, both at school and at home, the quicker they will make progress.

Digraph with Two Sounds: ‘oo’ ‘oo’ is introduced at first in two different sizes because it has two sounds: /oo/ as in ‘book’ and /oo/ as in ‘moon’. In reading books it always looks the same. The children have to learn “If one sound doesn’t work, try the other sound”. (Demonstrate with a word like ‘moon’: the short /oo/ doesn’t work but the long /oo/ does.)

Reading Tricky Words Tricky Words Teaching Tricky Words is the fifth of the five basic skills: The children learn that there are some words that you cannot sound out. When you do they do not make sense. We just have to learn how to read these words by looking at them, saying them and practising. These words were given to you at your home visit along with the timetable of when we are teaching each word. You can flashcard these to your child to help them practise reading them at home. After half term, we are also going to start learning how to write these words.

Independent Writing The children need to know: The 44 letter sounds How to hear the sounds in words One way of writing the letters for the sounds What they want to say Independent Writing Once the children are able to write words and little sentences using their knowledge of the letter sounds, they are ready for some independent writing. First, the children should think of a sentence they want to write. Then they need to think of each word in turn and write down letters for the sounds they can hear. It usually looks like this (see screen). At this stage the children’s spelling will not be accurate, but their work can be read because they’ve carefully sounded out the words using their phonics- this is what we encourage in reception. This is very empowering for children and it’s important to praise their efforts when they start to read and write. As children move through the school, accurate spelling develops through: reading plenty of books knowing the alternative ways in which sounds are written. Spelling rules are taught as children progress through the school. But for the reception year, we encourage the children to write down the sounds they hear in the words- won’t always be spelt correctly- don’t worry, we’re just encouraging the children to write!

Summary With Jolly Phonics the code is taught carefully, starting with the simplest skills and gradually building up to the more complicated ones. Reading at home Juts to re-cap, when hearing your child read at home, encourage them to use their phonics, so sounding out the words, and then trying to work out the word rather than just being told what the word says. Parental support in school is always beneficial and is very much appreciated by everyone; if anyone is keen to come in and help hear readers who isn’t already then please let me know afterwards.