St Barnabas and St Paul’s CE Primary School Reading and Phonics workshop How to help at home

How we teach reading in reception The first step is through speaking and listening skills – can children hear sounds, say sounds and make sounds. Can they rhyme and robot talk? Can they tell a story by looking at the pictures?

Most important thing – From a very early age… Talking and Listening. Reading with and to your child Playing listening games Singing songs and rhymes Simple movement games All these things will help to build up connections in the brain, an enjoyment of language and confidence to try things out.

Characters

We then teach children letter sounds and how to put sounds together (blending) to read words. We use a phonics scheme called letters and sounds.

Phonics Overview ‘Letters & Sounds’ is the government programme for teaching phonics and high frequency words It is split into 6 phases with the different phases being covered in different years in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1.  Phase 1– Nursery / Reception  Phase 2– Reception  Phase 3– Reception  Phase 4– Reception / Year 1  Phase 5– Year 1  Phase 6– Year 2....

PHONICS Correct pronunciation Little and often is the key. Does not have to be formal. Link it to your child’s interests.

PHONEME - what you hear The smallest unit of sound in a word. There are 44 phonemes that we teach.

The 44 phonemes /s/ /ss/ /a//t//p//i//n//m//g//o//c/ /k/ /ck/ /e//u//r//h//b//f/ /ff/ /j//v//w//x/ /y//qu//ch//sh//th/ /ng//ai//ee//igh//oa/ /oo/ /ar//or//ur//ow//oi//ear//air//ure//er/ /d/ /l/ /ll/ /z/ /zh/

GRAPHEME Letters representing a phoneme - what you see e.g. c ai igh Children need to practise recognising the grapheme and saying the phoneme that it represents.

BLENDING Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p and merging or ‘blending’ them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’

SEGMENTING ‘Chopping Up’ the word to spell it out The opposite of blending Sound talk the word

Segment and Blend these words… drep blom gris Nonsense games like this help to build up skills – and are fun!

Once children are good with single phonemes… DIGRAPHS – 2 letters that make 1 sound ll ss zz oa ai TRIGRAPHS – 3 letters that make 1 sound igh dge

Segmenting Activity Have a go at sound talking to say how many phonemes in each word. dog boat dress sprint string

Here are the answers dog = d – o – g = 3 phonemes boat = b – oa – t = 3 phonemes dress = d - r - e – ss = 4 phonemes sprint = s – p – r – i – n – t = 6 phonemes string = s – t – r – i – ng = 5 phonemes

TRICKY WORDS Words that are not phonically decodeable e.g. was, the, I Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become decodeable once we have learned the harder phonemes e.g. out, there,

Now you have the knowledge…. Play lots of sound and listening games with your child. Read as much as possible to and with your child. Encourage and praise – get them to have a ‘good guess’. Ask your child’s teacher if you want to know more.

What next? Your child will get a reading book to take home today. Please read with your child. Sign the reading record to show you have read with your child. Return to school each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Useful websites Jolly phonics song videos Phase 2 Phase 3 ated ated

Useful apps ect… Cbeebies playtime app – alphablocks Cbeebies rhyme rocket/ alphablocks Letter names – Kids ABC letters Interactive stories – lots of different stories made by TabTale