1. Synthetic Phonics
Putting together unfamiliar words by translating letters into sounds and blending them together : synthesising)

2. Basic Phonics PHONEME – sound
GRAPHEME-letter that represents the sound
GPC – grapheme phoneme correspondence: letters that match the sound letter – p letters – sh letters – tch letters – ough
Diagraph – 2 letters that make one sound e.g. th, ai, ie, or
Trigraph – 3 letters that make one sound

3. Why teach synthetic phonics?
Skills – blending - reading segmenting – writing ( think of an orange)
Oral segmenting is crucial in Nursery and Reception, use fingers to show sounds e.g. p i n c v c
duck
. . cvc word (ck) diagraph – 1 sound

4. Best Bets
Teach children about ‘best bets’ – understand which graphemes go where e.g. /ai/ normally appears in the middle of a word. ay is normally found at the end of words.
‘day’ instead of ‘dai’
The same spelling may represent more than one phoneme: mean deaf i.e. reading for meaning

5. Split diagraphs/(Magic ‘e’)
Phase 5a – m-/a/-k-/e/ not m-/ai/-k
Play the standing word activity with 2 letters of the split diagraph holding hands. Show the separation.
Thereafter in written words mark the split diagraph with a curved line underneath joining the two letters together
Try a split digraph hunt in a piece of text

6. Split diagraphs/(Magic ‘e’)
2 vowels out walking, the first one does the talking
ee – Yr R
ie, ue, ae and oe – YR 1
ae – make
ee – these
ie – bike
oe – smoke
ue - tune

7. Phonics Rules A short vowel (sound) A long vowel (name)
miss/hill/duck/huff/jazz – if the sound in front is a short vowel then a double letter i.e. double consonsant for a short vowel
y – is a something sound – it can be a consonant or vowel
After a ‘w’ sound ‘a’ says ‘o’ – was, want, what

8. The same phoneme can be represented/spelled in more than one way
ball torch saw warm caught bought core pore pour

9. Polysyllabic words and other words
play/ground – mark the syllable boundaries with a diagonal line
DON’T CLAP SYLLABLES – tap your palm
Out/side – when you have sounded out the word – say the whole word
Teach ‘ing’ first as a suffix then ‘ed’
Use mood voices; sleepy, happy or sad
Use a ‘posh’ voice – helps the children to hear the sounds

10. Phase 6
Still a focus on sounding out and blending and using best bets to spell words
Greater focus on formal spelling patterns
Using rules to add suffixes to words e.g. drop the e add ed
Teach the meaning of these suffixes and how they change the word e.g. ed changes a word to past tense.

11. Suffixes & Prefixes
ed, ing- changing the tense of the verb (irreguler verbs)
er, est- superlatives and comparatives
ly- adverbs
ful & less- full of, less of
cian, tion and sion
mis, non- opposite
un- undo

12. Grammar in Phonics
Looking into what nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
Adding s or es for plurals
Compound words e.g. butter + fly
Contractions- using apostrophe in correct place
Mnemonics e.g. because- big elephants cause accidents unless tanding easy beautiful b e a u tiful
Changing nouns into adjectives by adding y
Synonyms

13. ICT Resources
- interactive resources, planning and resources (subscription for more access) free 7 day trial
- resources and Letters and Sounds overview (subscription for more access)
(planning and assessment grids and resources and electronic version of Dfe’s ‘Letters and Sounds’ – which is now out of print)
Teacher’s pet/sparklebox/twinkle – all have good resources