1. Parent’s Writing Meeting Monday 21st November

2. What is phonics?
Phonics is the method we use in school to teach reading and writing.
Phonics is teaching the sound that a letter or group of letters makes.
How to break a work into it’s individual sounds to be able to spell it.
How to blend together the sounds you see/hear in a word in order to read it.

3. Understanding phonics
Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound in a word
e.g c a t
Grapheme – a letter or group of letters that represent one sound.
e.g sh igh ch
Diagraph – two letters making one sound.
e.g sho p

4. Understanding phonics
Trigraph – 3 letters that make one sound.
e.g n igh t
Split digraph – 2 letters split to make one sound.
e.g c a k e
Segmenting – split up a word into it’s individual sounds (phonemes)
Blending – draw individual sounds together to pronounce a word.

5. Segmenting & Blending Let’s try! Segment (breaking the word up):
Key skills in early reading. When reading with your child, you will need to support them to segment and blend unfamiliar words.
Let’s try!
Segment (breaking the word up):
cat c a t (3 sounds, 3 letters)
queen qu ee n (3 sounds, 5 letters)
Blending (putting the sounds together to make a word)
p u t put
sh ou t shout

6. The phonics curriculum we follow is: Letters and Sounds
Programme of study
The phonics curriculum we follow is: Letters and Sounds
To support the children to learn the sounds quickly and to cater for different types of learners we use: Jolly Phonics actions and songs.

7. Tricky Words
Tricky words are words that CANNOT be sounded out using phonics.
Unfortunately there are quite a lot of these in the English Language:
e.g said, the, you, why, are
It is really important that you DO NOT use letter sounds when reading these words as it will confuse your child. Instead use the letter names.
Children just have to learn these by sight.
We teach these words each week alongside the letter sounds.

8. Word books
We write the tricky words the children are learning in their word book.
They will bring this home to practise reading and writing the words if you want to support them.
They are not spellings to learn for a spelling test – we will not test them. We will practise with them at school as well to help them read them by sight and write them easily.

9. The Alphabet & saying the phonemes correctly.
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg
Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo
Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww
Xx Yy Zz
A you tube link to support you with sounding the phonemes correctly without putting the ‘uh’ sound at the end.

10. External Links to support your child’s learning by practising at home
When using these resources make sure you are going on to games that are an appropriate level (phase) for your child, so they find it a bit tricky, but can do it independently. If it is too hard for them, go down a level. It is very important that they feel like successful readers and writers.
GOOD LUCK & have fun learning!

11. Encouraging Writing
Write to them! Notes, messages, warning signs, letters, cards, invitations, secrets and magic! Get them to write to the tooth fairy and Father Christmas. They always write back! Ask them to help write a shopping list.
Writing their name
Holding their pencil correctly and comfortably so they can control their writing.
Encourage and praise any attempts at writing. Always ask them what they have written and comment on any letters/ words that you can read.

12. Talk to Write ‘News-style’ writing each week
Before writing children need time to talk and think about what they want to ‘say’ in their written work.
‘Talk to write’ slips will go home each Friday to be returned on Monday
Space for you to jot down a few notes we can use to start a conversation with your child and to jog their memory about what they want to write.
Sometimes we will write about what they did during the weekend/ holidays. Do not feel under pressure to do anything special for them to write about.

13. Any questions?