1. Phonics Meeting for Parents
Monday 17th October

2. Why teach phonics?
The ability to read and write well is a vital skill for all children, paving the way for an enjoyable and successful school experience.
Phonics helps children to develop good reading and spelling skills
e.g. cat can be sounded out for reading and spelling
We use a synthetic scheme called ‘Letters and Sounds’ as our teaching resource.

3. Why synthetic phonics?
“Synthetic phonics offers the vast majority of young children the best and most direct route to becoming skilled readers and writers”
Sir Jim Rose, Rose Review of Reading 2006
Synthetic phonics is simply the ability to convert a letter or letter group into sounds that are then blended together into a word.

4. Phonics at a glance Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending
Knowledge of the alphabetic code.

5. Phonics Consists of: Identifying sounds in spoken words
Recognising the common spellings of each sound.
Blending sounds into words for reading.
Segmenting words into sounds for spelling.

6. How many phonemes can you hear in cat?
Some Definitions
A Phoneme
This is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
How many phonemes can you hear in cat?

7. These are the letters that represent the phoneme.
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 write sound buttons to represent each grapheme:
t ai igh

8. A word always has the same number of phonemes and graphemes!
A phoneme you hear
A grapheme you see
A word always has the same number of phonemes and graphemes!

9. How to say the sounds
Saying the sounds correctly with your child is extremely important
The way we say sound may well be different from when you were at school
We say the shortest form of the sounds

10. The 44 phonemes /b/ /d/ /f/ /g/ /h/ /j/ /k/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /ng/ /p/ /r/
/v/
/w/
/y/
/z/
/th/
/ch/
/sh/
/zh/
/a/
/e/
/i/
/o/
/u/
/ae/
/ee/
/ie/
/oe/
/ue/
/oo/
/ar/
/ur/
/au/
/er/
/ow/
/oi/
/air/
/ear/
/ure/

11. This is where it gets tricky!
Phonemes are represented by graphemes.
A grapheme can consist of 1, 2 or more letters.
A phoneme can be represented/spelled in more than one way ( cat, kennel, choir)
The same grapheme may represent more than one phoneme ( me, met)

12. Blending (for reading)
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’

13. Segmenting (for spelling)
‘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

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

15. 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

16. Segmenting Activity
Using ‘sound buttons’ can you say how many phonemes are in each word.
shelf
dress
sprint
string

17. Did you get it right? shelf = sh – e – l – f = 4 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

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

19. Grapheme Key Vocabulary
Digraph
Trigraph
Split diagraph
2 letters making one sound ( ai, ee, oo)
3 letters making one sound ( igh , dge )
Where the two letters are not adjacent
( a-e, e-e )

20. Letters and Sounds
Letters and Sounds is divided into six phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. Children have time to practise and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’, which are words with spellings that are unusual.
Phase sheets
100 HFW sheet

21. Lesson format
In each year group, phonic lessons follow the same format:
Revise: The children will revise previous learning.
Teach: New phonemes or high frequency or tricky words will be taught.
Practice: The children will practise the new learning by reading and/or writing the words.
Apply: The children will apply their new learning by reading or writing sentences.
From Foundation Stage 2 to Year 3 all phonics lessons follow this format

22. Phonic learning is fun!
The children learn and practise their phonemes in lots of fun ways:
Sound talking and rhyming.
Playing games – table games or interactive games on the computer.
Using phoneme frames, “sound buttons” and whiteboards to spell words.
Sorting phonemes.
Making words with phonemes.
Being phoneme “detectives”.
Reading and writing sentences. Silly sentences are great fun!
Sequence in lesson of revisit/revise, teach, practise, apply

23. Phase 1 Environmental sounds Instrumental sounds Body percussion
Rhythm and Rhyme
Alliteration
Voice sounds
Oral blending and segmenting

24. Phase 2
In this phase children will continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, including ‘sound-talk’. They will also be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of graphemes (letters), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme.
Each sound has a picture, action and song to help them remember these.
VC and CVC words

25. Phase 2 Sounds are introduced in sets Set 1: s a t p Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k
Set 4: ck e u r
Set 5: h b f ff l ll ss

26. How many words can you make?
s a t p i n m d
Make as many CVC & VC words as you can!

27. Phase 3 The purpose of this phase is to:
teach one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes
practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light
learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly
read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them
read and write words in phrases and sentences.

28. Phase 3 Letter Progression: Set 6 - j, v, w, x Set 7 - y, z, zz, qu
Graphemes:
er, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo
ear, air, ure,
Consonant digraphs:
ch, sh, th, ng.

29. Can you use the phoneme frame to work out how many sounds there are in these words?
pig p i g
church ch ur
coat
curl
thorn
chick
down
shirt

30. Phase 4
Children continue to practise previously learned graphemes and phonemes and learn how to read and write:
CVCC words: tent, damp, toast, chimp
For example, in the word ‘toast’, t = consonant, oa = vowel, s = consonant, t = consonant.
and CCVC words: swim, plum, sport, cream,
spoon
For example, in the word ‘cream’, c = consonant, r = consonant, ea = vowel, m = consonant.
They will be learning more tricky words and continuing to read and write sentences together.
Tricky words
said, so, do, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what

31. Phase 5
The children will learn new graphemes for reading and spelling.
They will learn best fit spellings.
E.g. ai, a-e, ay, eigh, all make the same sound in words
They will continue to read and spell tricky words.

32. Alternative graphemes for: i, o, c, g, u, ow, ie, ea, er, a, y, ch, ou
ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e.
Alternative graphemes for:
i, o, c, g, u, ow, ie, ea, er, a, y, ch, ou

33. Phase 5 activity

34. Phase 6 Recognising phonic irregularities
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
Teaching spelling long words
Finding and learning the difficult bits in words

35. Resources Jolly Phonics Actions HFW and sounds by phase 100 HFW

36. Year R
Before they can hear the smallest units of sounds e.g. d-o-g, there should be lots of sound work- for their hearing to tune into the different sounds. Lots of sound walks will help.
For reading it’s about getting fluent word recognition- switch over to sight reading when ready.
Other strategies to help children read: read forwards- can they work it out; see it in the context, using the picture cues etc.
By the end of Reception should have one way of writing every single sound in the English Language (should be on phase 3/4 of letters and sounds).
Jolly Phonics resources- see action sheet.

37. Year 1
By the end of year 1 the aim is for children to have completed phase 5.
They should know different ways of writing each sound and use their knowledge of patterns to identify which grapheme it is most likely to be.
Phonics Screening check.
Correcting speech

38. Phonics
Screening

39. Why are the children being screened?
Every Year 1 child in the country will be taking the phonics screening check in the same week in June.
The aim of the check is to ensure that all children are able to read by the end of year two.
This ‘midpoint check’ will ensure that we have a clear understanding of what the children need to learn in year 2.

40. What will the children be expected to do? THIS IS NOT A READING TEST
The check is very similar to tasks the children already complete during phonics lessons.
Children will be asked to ‘sound out’ a word and blend the sounds together.eg d-o-g - dog
The focus of the check is to see which sounds the children know and therefore the children will be asked to read made up ‘nonsense’ words.
THIS IS NOT A READING TEST

41. Examples of words:

42. When will the screening take place?
The screening will take place throughout the week beginning Monday 12th June.
The check has been designed so that children of all abilities will be able to take part on a 1:1 basis.

43. How can you help? spine - i_e Digraph- 2 letters making one sound cow
Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when reading or writing. Focusing particularly on spotting more unusual sound patterns.
Digraph- 2 letters making one sound
cow
Trigraphs- 3 letters making one sound
night
Split digraphs- 2 vowels with a consonant inbetween. Use to be known as the magic e!
spine - i_e

44. How can you help? http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/BuriedTreasure2.html
Encourage your child to use their sounds when writing and use their actions to find the sound they need.
Children can practise their phonics by playing games online. The children particularly like ‘Buried Treasure’

45. Year 2 Ways to learn spellings Look, cover, write and check
Find words within the word (there's a 'hen' in 'when'!)
Break the word up into sounds (th-a-nk)
Break the word up into syllables (Fri + day)
Make up a silly sentence/ mnemonic using the letters (big elephants cause accidents under small elephants spells 'because')
Find a word that rhymes with it: is the spelling the same? E.g. light, might, tight

46. Some fun ways to learn spellings: (a few examples)
Play Dough Words - use play dough to form letters to spell out each word.
Paint It! - use a paintbrush and paint to spell words.
Letter Tiles - spell words using letter tiles
Build a Word with Legos - using some tape write the letters needed for each word ahead of time on some Lego. Mix them up and then call out a word and have child(ren) build it using the appropriate Lego and you will end up with some spelling word towers. Now that's a fun way to spell.
Magnet Letters - Take a cookie sheet or head for the fridge, add some magnetic letters and spell out the words.
Sing - Use whatever song or beat you like but a simple B-I-N-G-O like song & some clapping works wonders especially on that first day of practicing words. It really helps kids begin to remember those words.
Hopscotch Spelling - Write letters outside in chalk or play indoors with large letter cards on floor. Hop from letter to letter to spell words.
Wordsearch - you can visit sites like PuzzleMaker , plug in your child's spelling list and create a word search that you can print. Then have your child search for the correctly spelled spelling words and circle them.

47. Our Reading Books
For more information on spelling strategies see ‘Ways to learn spelling’ sheet.
T:\Reading\Book Bands\Book Band Reference Sheet.docx

48. Reading Play snap Play ‘I spy’ with sounds Post-it notes around child’s room Magnetic letters Play hide and seek Look for word when reading- how many times can you find it? (see ‘practise makes perfect’ and ‘learning through play’ sheets.

49. And most importantly ENJOY READING!
REMEMBER: Phonics is not the only thing needed to become a fluent reader.
Please continue to read with your child each night and encourage them to:
Sound out
Re-read to check it makes sense.
Use pictures and contexts for clues.
Ask questions about the book.
And most importantly ENJOY READING!

50. Have a go!
Please feel free to take any of the hand-outs and/or talk to the teachers.
Thank you.