1. Fun With Phonics Reception 2016-17
A guide to supporting your child’s reading and
phonics development.

2. Reading
At Meadow Lane we give the children lots of opportunities to read:
Morning box of books
Big books linked to the topics
Book areas
Reading with volunteers
Parents’ reading mornings
Guided Reading
Library

3. Reading at School Phonics Quiet Reading Library
In phonics children learn to read different graphemes, spelling patterns and key words. They practise using and applying these when reading words and sentences.
Children are given the opportunity to read quietly on a regular basis. This helps them to develop their skills independently as well as deepening enjoyment and comprehension.
To foster a love of reading we aim to create comfortable spaces where there are a wide range of books available. The children are therefore encouraged to spend time reading in the library and class books corners.

4. Reading at School Shared Reading Guided Reading Individual Reading
Children are taught in a small group. There is a specific focus linked to the children’s reading level and target. It is also an opportunity to model reading behaviours.
This takes place several times a week at story time and in literacy sessions. Usually the focus is on enjoyment, understanding and comprehension skills. The same book is often revisited several times.
Children read individually with a teacher at various times. They may also read more regularly with a literacy volunteer or teaching assistant.

5. Reading at Home
At Meadow Lane Infant School we believe in the importance of parents and staff working together to give your child the best start.
Reading at home is one of the most important things you can do to support your child’s learning as:
Children need to constantly practise learned reading skills.
Individual reading is focused on your child and what they need.
It’s an opportunity to foster enjoyment and enthusiasm for reading.

6. Reading with your child at home
Talk about the book together to aid comprehension and enjoyment. a
Choose a time and a text which suits both of you! 5 minutes every evening
Use phonics and some
other strategies to work out
what words say.

7. Beginning to Read: Early Learning Goals
Begins with books with no words to books with few words in simple sentences, often repeated.
Children begin to understand the conventions of books.
They begin to track print.
They are beginning to use their phonic knowledge to decode words.
They may recognise on sight some simple common words such as the, at, and, in.
They can talk about the stories and the pictures:
Eg Recounting what has happened, answering simple questions, giving opinions.
pink
red
yellow

8. Reading Diaries Six in a Bed
Week Commencing…… ……………………...……………………………
Home Reading
Day
Book and Page Number
Remarks
Mon
Six in a Bed 
Jo talked about the pictures and picked out the characters 
Tues
Weds
Thurs
Fri
Weekend
Guided Reading
 Today we matched up our character cards and found them in the book. Jo knew all of them except Kipper. Lots of enthusiasm.

9. Guided Reading
The children read with the teacher once per week in a group.
Each child has the same book in the group.
The teacher works on skills linked to the Literacy Early Learning Goals.
The teacher will record comments in the Guided Reading box.

10. Jolly Phonics
Jolly Phonics is a fun and child centered approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. With actions for each of the 42 letter sounds, the multi-sensory method is very motivating for children and teachers. The letter sounds are split into seven groups.
1. s a t p I n
2. ck e h r m d
3. g o u l f b
4. ai j oa ie ee or
5. z w ng v oo 00
6. y x ch sh th th
7. qu ou oi ue er ar

11. Five skills taught in Jolly Phonics
1.Learning the letter sounds
Children are taught the 42 main letter sounds. This includes alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.
2.Learning letter formation
Using different multi-sensory methods, children learn how to form and write the letters.
3.Blending
Children are taught how to blend the sounds together to read and write new words.
4.Identifying the sounds in words (Segmenting)
Listening for the sounds in words gives children the best start for improving spelling.
5.Tricky words
Tricky words have irregular spellings and children learn these separately.

12. make, eve, pine, hope, tune, Sounding out
The smallest unit of sound in a word
Sounding out
A written
representation
of a phoneme
Eg, a, ai, igh
Commonly
occuring
words which
are tricky to
decode
Imaginary
‘button’ under
phonemes
Running sounds
together to make a
word eg c- a- t
Makes the
vowels in words
say their names
Splitting words up to work out
which phonemes are in them
make, eve, pine, hope, tune,

13. How should we pronounce phonemes to make reading easy for our children?
f l a g

14. Tricky Words Some words cannot be decoded phonetically.
These are often the more common words in the English language. For example was, said, the, of, he, me.
They cannot be sounded out so children just have to learn them. For example through:
Look, cover, write, check

15. Key messages Have fun with reading Talk about the text with your child
Use phonics first
Press the sound buttons as you read
Remember the tricky words