1. A workshop for parents and carers
Fundamental Phonics
A workshop for parents and carers

2. Aims of this Session To share how phonics is taught at this school.
To develop your confidence in helping your children
with phonics and reading
To revise the basics of phonics and some useful phonics terms
To outline the different stages in phonic development
To show examples of activities and resources that schools use to teach phonics
To give you an opportunity to ask questions.

3. Warm-up discussion How did you learn to read?
What was your favourite book as a child?
What was the first book that you
remember?
Did you read it yourself?
Did someone else read it to you?

4. What is phonics and how can I help my child at home?

5. Everything starts with reading

6. knowledge of the alphabet
Phonics is all about using … +
skills for reading and spelling
knowledge of the alphabet
Learning phonics will help your child to
become a good reader and writer.

7. Every child in FS and KS1 learns daily phonics at their level
In KS2, children continue to learn phonics if they need to.
Phonics gradually progresses to learning and applying spellings, rules, etc.

8. Daily Phonics
Every day the children have a minute session of phonics.
Fast paced approach
Lessons encompass a range of games, songs and rhymes
This school uses the Letters and Sounds scheme to support the teaching of phonics
There are 6 phonics phases which children work through.

9. Technical Words Glossary

10. Phonics terms your child will learn at school
Phoneme
Grapheme
Blending
Segmenting
Digraph
Trigraph
Phoneme Frame
Sound Button
Tricky Words
CVC

11. Glossary
Phonemes: The smallest units of sound that are found within a word.
Grapheme: The spelling of the sound e.g. t
Digraph: Two letters that make one sound when read (sh)
Trigraph: Three letters that make one sound (igh)
CVC: Stands for consonant, vowel, consonant.
Segmenting: Breaking up a word into its sounds.
Blending : Putting the sounds together to read a word.
Tricky words: Irregular words that cannot easily be decoded.
High frequency words.

12. Getting ready for phonics
Tuning into sounds
Listening and remembering sounds
Talking about sounds
Music and movement
Rhythm and rhyme
Sound effects
Speaking and listening skills

13. How can I help at home? Nursery rhymes, songs, action rhymes.
Add sound effects to stories.
Music and movement: rhythm, guess the instrument.
Talking about sounds: listening walks, loud/soft, high/low, silly noises.
Speaking & listening: silly sentences “Happy Harry hops”, mimics, animal sounds.

14. Saying the sounds Sounds Book
Sounds should be articulated clearly and precisely
Stretchy sounds - e.g. ssssss, mmmmmm, llllllll, nnnnnn, shhhhhhh, rrrrrrr, zzzzzzzz, vvvvvvv
Bouncy sounds - e.g. /c/ /t/ /p/ /b/ /d/ /g/
Unvoiced - /t/, /h/ and /p/
No schwa-ing! c not „cuh‟

15. Phonics Words Blending Your children will learn to use the term:
Children need to be able to hear the separate sounds in a word and then blend them together to say the whole word .

16. Blending
/b/ /e/ /d/ = bed
/t/ /i/ /n/ = tin
/m/ /u/ /g/ = mug

17. Phonics Words Segmenting Your children will learn to use the term:
Children need to be able to hear a whole word and say every sound that they hear .

18. Segmenting
bed =
/b/ /e/ /d/
tin =
/t/ /i/ /n/
mug =
/m/ /u/ /g/

19. How can I help at home? Oral blending: The Robot Game
Children need to practise hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a word.
For example, you say ‘b-u-s’, and your
child says ‘bus’.
“What’s in the box?” is a great game for practising this skill.

20. Next steps Learning phonemes to read and write simple words
Children will learn their first 19 phonemes:
Set 1: s a t p Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k Set 4: ck (as in duck) e u r
Set 5: h b l f ff (as in puff) ll (as in hill) ss (as in hiss)
They will use these phonemes to read and spell simple “consonant-vowel-consonant” (CVC) words:
sat, tap, dig, duck, rug, puff, hill, hiss
All these words contain 3 phonemes. 20

21. phoneme Phonics Words Your children will learn to use the term:
Phonemes are sounds that can be heard in words e.g. c-a-t

22. grapheme Phonics Words Your children will learn to use the term:
This is how a phoneme is written down

23. Phonics Words digraph Your children will learn to use the term:
This means that the phoneme comprises two letters
e.g. ll, ff, ck, ss

24. Phonics words
Phoneme frame and sound buttons c a t . . . f i sh . . _

25. Phoneme frames game
log duck fill

26. Answers l o g d u ck . .
. .
. _ f i ll . _ . 26

27. Tricky Words the was said you some
There are many words that cannot be blended or segmented because they are irregular.
the
was
said
you
some

28. How can I help at home?
Play ‘I spy’ using the sounds instead of letter names
How many sounds?
What sound did you hear?
Sound-talk/ robot talk/puppet talk
'Simon says'
Reverse the segmenting and blending
Stress that this oral work prepares the way for later.
For older children you can do the same with syllables.

29. Next steps
Letter names are introduced through alphabet songs in this phase.
It is expected that letter names will be known by the end of the Foundation Stage.
Children should be able to recognize letters by name on an alphabet frieze including lower and upper case letters.

30. Learning the long vowel phonemes
Children will enter this phase once they know the first 19 phonemes and can blend and segment to read and spell simple words (CVC) e.g. cat, dog.
They will learn another 26 phonemes / sounds:
j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
They will use these phonemes (and the ones from previous phase) to read and spell words:
chip, shop, thin, ring, pain, feet, night,
boat, boot, look, farm, fork, burn,
town, coin, dear, fair, sure 30

31. Trigraph Phonics Words Your children will learn to use the term:
This means that the phoneme comprises three letters e.g. igh , ear, ure

32. Use your phoneme frame and
write these words
ring chick night

33. Answers r i ng ch i ck .
. _ _ . _ n
igh t . _ .

34. What can I do to help at home?
Continue to sing nursery rhymes.
Look for words in the environment that have trigraphs, digraphs, tricky sounds etc.

35. Next steps
Introducing consonant clusters: reading and spelling words with four or more phonemes
This phase doesn’t introduce any new phonemes.
It focuses on reading and spelling longer words with
the phonemes they already know.
These words have consonant clusters at the beginning:
spot, trip, clap, green, clown
…or at the end: tent, mend, damp, burnt
…or at the beginning and end: trust, spend, twist

36. Write these words on your phoneme frame
spot damp

37. Answers s p o t d a m p
. . . .
. . . .

38. Next steps Learn different ways to say the same grapheme.
fin/find, hot/cold, cat/cent, got/giant

39. Learning all the variations
Learning that the same phoneme can be represented in more than one way
burn first term heard work

40. Learning all the variations
Learning that the same grapheme can represent more than one phoneme:
meat bread
he bed
bear hear
cow low 40

41. A Real Treat Tom was very happy. It was the weekend and he was
off to the beach with his mum and dad, his puppy and
Baby Pete.
‘Help me pack the green bag,’ said mum. ‘We need sun cream and lots to eat.’
Tom got into his seat in the back of the car and the puppy got on his knee. Pete held his toy sheep. Off they went. Beep! Beep!
At the end of the street there was a big truck. It had lost
a wheel.
‘Oh, no,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll be here for a week!’
Dad went to speak to the driver to see if he could help.

42. A Real Treat Tom was very happy. It was the weekend and he was
off to the beach with his mum and dad, his puppy and
Baby Pete.
‘Help me pack the green bag,’ said mum. ‘We need sun cream and lots to eat.’
Tom got into his seat in the back of the car and the puppy got on his knee. Pete held his toy sheep. Off they went. Beep! Beep!
At the end of the street there was a big truck. It had lost
a wheel.
‘Oh, no,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll be here for a week!’
Dad went to speak to the driver to see if he could help.

43. Grouping words y ee
e-e ea

44. Teaching the split digraph
tie time
toe
tone
cue
cube
pie
pine

45. At the end of Y1
Phonics screening check for all pupils

46. The phonics screening check
The phonics screening check is a quick and easy check of your child’s phonics knowledge. It helps your school confirm whether your child has made the expected progress.
A child will sit with a teacher he or she knows and be asked to read 40 words aloud.
The child may have read some of the words before, while others will be completely new.
The check normally takes just a few minutes to complete and there is no time limit. If a child is struggling, the teacher will stop the check. The check is carefully designed not to be stressful for children.

47. What are ‘non-words’?
The check will contain a mix of real words and ‘non- words’ (or ‘nonsense words’). The child will be told before the check that there will be non-words that he or she will not have seen before. Many children will be familiar with this because many schools already use ‘non-words’ when they teach phonics.
Non-words are important to include because words such as ‘vap’ or ‘jound’ are new to all children. Children cannot read the non-words by using their memory or vocabulary; they have to use their decoding skills. This is a fair way to assess their ability to decode correctly.

48. Sample check words tox bim vap ulf geck chom tord thazz blan steck
hild
quemp
shin
gang
week
chill
grit
start
best
hooks

49. How can I help at home?
Point out obvious alternative spellings to words
Develop 'I spy' to include more tricky words
Think of made up words for different sounding phonemes, e.g. hed, beed
Use magnetic letters
Make up names for imaginary aliens and ask your child to decode them, e.g.
This is an alien from Mars. His name is Snork.
Can you tell me how to spell Snork?

50. Throughout Year Two (and beyond!)
During this phase, children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers
Most of the teaching at this stage revolves around spelling
Children should be able to decode quickly and silently because blending and sounding is now well established
Spelling should be phonemically accurate.

51. How can I help at home? tray trai rain rayn boil boyl boy
When spelling, encourage your child to think about what “looks right” what’s the ‘best bet’ for a spelling.
Have fun trying out different options…wipe clean whiteboards are good for trying out spellings.
tray
rain
boil
boy
throat
snow
trai
rayn
boyl
boi throwt snoa

52. At home Make time to listen to your child talking
Try switching off the TV, radio, phone etc.
Encourage them to make up their own stories whilst you write them down.
Listen around the home
Practise the phonemes together.
Use them to make different words at home and play the phonics games that we have looked at in this session.
Read every day with your child if possible.

53. Any questions?

54. Useful websites http://www.theschoolrun.com/what-magic-e

55. Free resources BBC Cbeebies Teach your monster to read Free apps
First Words Sampler
Phonics Genius
Phonics Awareness
Youtube
‘Articulation of Phonemes’ – examples of how to articulate the sounds correctly
‘Geraldine the Giraffe’ - phonics sounds video clips.

56. What will you do at home now?
Discuss with each other how you support your child at home
Share good ideas
Which ideas will you take away from today’s session?

57. Don’t forget….. Phonics is not an end in itself.
The important thing is reading – hearing your children read, reading to them, and helping them to develop an enjoyment of reading.
Learning to read should be fun for children and parents alike!