Phonics & WRITING 9 th October 2014

Overview What are we learning today (WALT) The importance of correct letter formation How to segment words What do the phases look like in Letters and Sounds relating to writing How to count phonemes and record graphemes Other ways of teaching spelling

Letter formation This is so important as it is really difficult to break bad habits!!

How are letter sounds used when writing? A grapheme-These are the letters that represent the phoneme. Children need to practise recognising the grapheme and saying the phoneme that it represents. The grapheme could be 1 letter, 2 letters or more! We often refer to these as sound buttons: t ai igh

Segmenting ‘ Chopping Up’ the word to spell it out The opposite of blending Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m, s-t-or-k) and writing down letters for each sound (phoneme) to form the word ‘him’ and ‘stork’

What does this look like? Ph2 Phase 2 – single letter sounds Listening for the phonemes in words and matching them to the graphemes A big cat is on a rug.

What does this look like? Ph3 Phase 3 – digraphs (2 letters making one sound) & trigraphs (3 letters making one sound) Now I can see this boat.

What does this look like? Ph4 Phase 4 – adjacent consonants I slept in a green tent.

Counting phonemes I am going to read out some words and I would like you to count the number of phonemes in each word. Phoneme frames Other techniques for teaching spelling

Can you use the phoneme frame to work out how many sounds there are in these words? pigpig churchchurch coat curl thorn chick down shut

What does this look like? Ph5 Phase 5 – alternative spellings for known sounds (eg. “ai” – ‘ay’ ‘eigh’ ‘a_e’ ‘ey’) This is the tricky bit!!! The children have to select the phoneme/grapheme from a range of alternatives. Making reading/writing links. Each day the girl and boy dance quickly. Eech dai the gurl and boi dans quicklee.

Phase 6 Recognising phonic irregularities and becoming more secure with less common grapheme – phoneme correspondences. Applying phonic skills and knowledge to recognise and spell an increasing number of complex words. Introducing and teaching the past tense Investigating and learning how to add suffixes Finding and learning the difficult bits in words Other spelling strategies, including analogy, mnemonics and syllables.

Best Bet They will learn best bet spellings. Rules words don’t usually end with i or v ai and oi are in the middle of words ay usually comes towards the end of the word and not in the middle.

MNEMONICS ould – oh, you, lucky duck (should, could, would) ound – oh you naughty duck (ground, found) laugh – laugh at ugly goat hair because – big elephants can always understand small elephants Island – an island is land surrounded by water Necessary – 1 collar and 2 sleeves are necessary Piece – a piece of pie

Finding the Tricky Bit Learning how to spell SUS Study the word Underline the difficult part(s) Say the word carefully Eg said jumped

Analogy We can use words that we already know how to spell to help us with other words. If I know how to spell house I can spell mouse. If I can spell could I can spell would and could

PREFIXES PREFIXMEANINGEXAMPLES anti-against or opposite toanticlockwise, antibiotic auto- selfautobiography, automat dis-not, or awaydissimilar, disconnect in-notinsane, inhuman il-notillogical, illegal im-notimmature, improbable ir-notirrelevant, irregular inter-betweeninternational, intermarry mis-wrongmisunderstand, misspell post-afterpostnatal, postscript pre-beforeprenatal, prehistoric pro-for, or forwardpropose, pro-British re-again, or backrewrite, reconsider sub-undersubmarine, substandard super-abovesupervisor, superhuman trans-acrosstransport, transplant un-not, or in reverseunfinished, unarmed

Exceptions … The English language is not entirely phonetic … so phonics cannot be the only approach used to write. In each Phase ‘tricky’ (Common Exception Words – CEWs) words are taught alongside the letter sounds eg. the (2); he (3); said (4); people (5) As children progress some of these CEWs become decodable eg. ‘like’ (4) becomes decodable once split digraphs are taught (5). Some words never become decodable, they just need to be learnt & retained