1. Welcome to our Phonics Information Session

2. Why phonics? Impact on learning to read and spell
First strategy that children should learn
Runs alongside other teaching methods
Reading isn’t just phonics!

3. Read everything and celebrate reading!

4. Technical definitions
Phoneme - The smallest unit of speech – a single sound in a word
Grapheme -The written symbol that represents a sound
Digraph - two letters that make one sound
Trigraph - three letters that make one sound
Segmenting - involves listening for the sounds and deciding which letters represent those phonemes
Blending - The process of decoding a word has two stages. Firstly the individual grapheme-phoneme correspondence is recognised and then the phonemes are blended into the word as it is read

5. Pronunciation of phonemes
Let’s listen to how they should be pronounced

6. Phonics for spelling - Segmenting
Sound buttons
Robot arms
Children listen to the word and then chop it into each individual phoneme they can hear before writing it down.
The focus is on phonetically plausible attempts.
How many sounds can you hear in the words cat, deep, ship, church?

7. pit dog Phonics - Phase 2 Focus on letter sound Keep the sounds short
Sound buttons – blending for reading
dog
pit

8. Phonics – Phase 3 ch sh ng th ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear
Children are introduced to digraphs and trigraphs. At the end of this phase, children should have a grapheme (written symbol) for every sound.
ch sh ng th ai
ee igh oa oo ar
or ur ow oi ear
air ure er

9. Phonics - Phase 4
Children are shown how to blend longer words together.
CCVC words – frog, stop, clown
CVCC words – tent, lunch, roast

10. Phonics - Phase 5
Children learn the alternative graphemes for phonemes.
For example the ‘ay’ phoneme can be written in many different ways
Common - ay (play) , ai (train) , a_e (cake)
Less common - eigh (eight) ey (they) a (bacon)

11. c a t d ee p sh i ch ur

12. What is the phonics screen?
The phonics screening check is an assessment to make sure that all pupils have learned phonic decoding to an appropriate standard by the age of 6. All Year 1 pupils in maintained schools, academies and free schools must complete the check.

13. How do we use the results of the phonics screen in school?
The phonics check will help us to identify the children who need extra help in phonics so they can receive the support they need to improve their reading skills. These children will then be able to retake the check in Year 2.

14. Phonics screen information
The check comprises a list of 40 words and non-words which the child will read one-to-one with a teacher. It only tests children’s phonic ability and does not take into account all the other reading strategies which they learn. When? Week beginning 13th June 2016

18. More information