1. Phonics at Horbury Primary School Letters and Sounds/LCP
Welcome
Phonics at Horbury Primary School Letters and Sounds/LCP
Faith
We would like to start by welcoming you all to our phonics meeting. As parents or carers you are your child’s most influential teacher with an incredibly important role to play in helping your child to read. Phonics is the understanding of how letters combine to make words and in our presentation we hope to clarify with you how this is important in enabling your child to read and write successfully.
If at any point you have any questions please feel free to ask them.
At our school we follow the letters and sounds, which was designed by the government, which breaks up the teaching of phonics into 6 overlapping phases. We also dip onto a range of other phonics materials, including the jolly phonics songs and phonics play to make our sessions fun and interactive.

2. Phonic Knowledge and skills Phase One (Nursery /Reception) Phase Two
Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds, and finally oral blending and segmenting.
Phase Two
(Nursery/Reception)
Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.
Phase Three
(Reception)
The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions and questions.
Phase Four
No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump
Phase Five
(Throughout Year 1)
Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes they know plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.
Phase Six
(Throughout Year 2 and beyond)
Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letter etc.
Faith
We’ve included an overview of the 6 phases which summarises what the children will learn during each phase and in which year group.
Mrs Frost will begin by explaining the phase 1 teaching of phonics which begins in our lower foundation stage.

3. Reading books to children
Carolyn
Reading books to children and talking about the stories is very important
It gives the children a love of books
It gives them a much wider vocabulary
It helps them to understand our language
However, it does not teach them how to read books for themselves. For this the children need phonics.
Speaking and listening skills as part of a broad and rich language experience provide the basis of phonic development.

4. 6 Basic Skills 1. Learning the letter sounds 2. Letter formation
Children should learn each letter by its sound, not its name
2. Letter formation
It is very important that children develop a good pencil grip and form their letters correctly.
3. Blending and segmenting
4. Identifying sounds in words
5. Spelling words
6. Reading tricky/high frequency words
Carolyn
*The first 4 skills are taught from the beginning which starts in the lower foundation stage.
*high frequency words and tricky words (words that can not be decoded at this stage) are introduced in the upper foundation stage.

5. Phase 1
Activities are mostly adult led and continue to underpin/work alongside the subsequent phases.
Most speaking and listening skills, oral blending and segmenting.
Carolyn
*This starts when the children enter the lower foundation stage and continue throughout the foundation stage and KS1.
*sound discrimination, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds, oral blending and segmenting.
*make time to listen to your child talking. Show that you are interested in what they have to say, look at your child, smile, nod, ask questions and make a response to show that you have been listening.
* Activities could include eye-spy, singing nursery rhymes, pointing out words around them, rhyme i.e. Cat on the mat, retelling familiar stories.

6. Phase 2/3 - Phonemes
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 Set 6: j v w x Set 7: y z/zz qu
Faith
Phase 2 begins in lower foundation stage and continues into upper foundation stage along with phase 3 and phase 4.
*The first groups of letters are chosen because it enables children to start blending and reading words at the beginning of the upper foundation stage.
*Alongside the phonemes(sounds of the letters) we also learn the names of the letters i.e. ABC.

7. Digraphs (two letters making one sound)
Faith
The digraphs (where 2 letters make one sound) are introduced in phase 3.
(It’s time for your participation now)
* Point to each digraph and ask everyone to call our the sound.
ai – rain
oa – goat
ie – tie
ee – sheep
or -torn

8. Articulation Letters and Sounds CD Faith
*to help you with the pronunciations we have provided you with a leaflet on articulating the sounds.
*listen to the CD and allow parents to join in during the 2nd time.

9. Multi-sensory approach.
Letter Formation
Tripod grip
Multi-sensory approach.
Faith
* We have provided you with a handout on letter formation and also early development of writing. Show letter formation sheet.
Provide a multisensory approach i.e. Sand, playdough, writing in the air, shaving foam, water and paint brushes outside, on the palm of their hand (their own note pad)
It is important to get the formation correct from the beginning before any bad habits develop. Gentle guidance/correction given at home, makes it easier for the children.
Cursive font

10. . Reading (blending) sun . . . Shop sand _ . . . . . . sing . .
Ria
*activity – say the sounds – parents to call out the word.
*In the beginning a little practice is needed most days
Children who can hear immediately that s-u-n is sun tend to have a naturally good ear for sounds. They rarely have problems with learning to blend sound by themselves.
with practice all children become successful, however it does take longer for some and these children find learning to read more difficult. Doing this type of activity at home is hugely beneficial.
Blending helps children to read a word. In phonics we put ‘sound buttons’ and lines under phonemes. These help the children to identify the different phonemes in the words. We also use phoneme frames whilst teaching.

11. Writing (segmenting)
Listening to the sounds in words, as we write, helps us to spell them.
For example, the sounds in the word hat are
h – a – t. Hold up a finger for each sound.
Scribe the word when segmenting it.

12. Independent Writing
Faith
Children are encouraged to write words and sentences throughout the foundation stage. This is an example of writing expected at the end of the upper foundation stage.
Help you child to write booklet.
Within our phonics children get opportunities to write and spell words.
We then encourage the children to write for different purposes for example – writing a shopping list, writing an invitation, filling in the missing word, labelling pictures, writing stories and writing descriptions, in all areas of continuous provision

13. Phonics books
Phonics homework will sent home with the new phonemes/words that they have been learning, including tricky words. We encourage the children to practise reading their words at home.
Faith
* Phonics books sent home – show and explain books.

14. Games www.phonicsplay.co.uk www.letters-and-sounds.com ictgames.com
mrthorne.com
Pairs game
Word search
Hunt the letter
Snap
Make a sound book
Flashcards
Faith
*Here are some examples of some games and a website for phonics activities.

15. Thank you for your time and for coming to our meeting
Thank you for your time and for coming to our meeting! We hope this has been a useful introduction to our phonics teaching. We are happy to answer any individual questions you might have.
Faith