1. Phonics workshop

2. What is phonics? Phonics is….. The skills of segmentation
and blending
Knowledge of the
alphabetic code
Children must be taught:
grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondences (the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence
to apply the highly important skills of blending(sythesising) phonemes in order, all through a word to read it;
to apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell;
That blending and segmenting are reversible processes.
(Wray and Medwell 2008:14)
Phonics today includes the development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences, knowledge of the alphabet and names of letters, the skills of blending and segmenting and, rather strangely, sight knowledge of common irregular words and their spellings. Also, morphemic content at later stages e.g –ed patterns. (Wray and Medwell 2008: 15)

3. Consonant phonemes
/b/ baby /m/ man /y/ yes /d/ dog /n/ nut /z/ zebra /f/ field /p/ paper /w/ was /g/ game /r/ wrong /l/ lamb /h/ hat /s/ sun /ng/ ring /j/ judge /t/ tap /zh/treasure /k/ cook /v/van /ch/ chip /sh/ ship /th/ thin/then
Approximately ½ phonemes are consonants and ½ are vowels (interesting as there are only 5 vowels!)
Go through pronunciation of all. Do not over-pronounce ‘ssss’ not ‘suh’ etc. Adding an ‘uh’ sound makes it more difficult for children to blend the phonemes to read
Following phoneme count activity, return to this slide to deal with difficulties:
e.g. consonant clusters/adjacent consonants*, digraphs, trigraphs, double letters as consonant digraphs
‘x’ as 2 phonemes (C+S e.g. box)
‘qu’ always together (C+W)
y = consonant + vowel
‘c’ and ‘g’ soft (cymbal, bicycle, recent gym, giraffe, ginger) and hard (camera, candle, camel gate goat grill)
phonemes are represented in different ways e.g. /j/ j or g in ‘magic’ and ‘judge’ and ‘giraffe; dge in ‘judge’
* May come across different terms for adjacent consonants e.g. consonant clusters/blends/consecutive consonants!
EAL focus: different language use different sets of phonemes – possible difficulties in hearing /saying some phonemes (r/l discrimination for Japanese speakers)

4. Vowel phonemes
/a/ cat /ie/ tie /er/sister /e/ peg /oe/ road /ow/ shout /i/ pig /ue/ moon /oi/ coin /o/ log /oo/ look /air/ fare /u/ plug /ar/ cart /ear/ sheer /ae/ pain /ur/ first /ure/ tour /ee/ feet /au/ torn
Vowel phonemes more difficult to hear. Almost all of them have 2 or more representations.
Some vowels are unstressed ‘schwa’ e.g. rota, picture – makes spelling (segmentation) difficult.

5. Terminology Phoneme Grapheme GPC Digraph Trigraph Adjacent consonant
Split digraph
Blending
Segmenting
CVC
CVCC

6. Some definitions: A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
‘Correct terminology should be introduced from YR onwards. Often children do not have a problem using these words (in fact they are often very proud of their ability to do so). In terms of numeracy, we wouldn’t dream of teaching 3-D shapes to children and using the word ‘ball’ instead of ‘sphere’ or ‘box’ instead of cube/cuboid. The principle with phonic vocabulary is the same – it’s just that we haven’t been used to using these words with children until relatively recently.’ NLS

7. Some definitions:
Grapheme Letter(s) representing a phoneme. t ai igh

8. Some definitions:
Blending: Recognising the letter-sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.
Rose identified blending and segmenting (next slide) skills as essential features of quality phonic sessions.

9. Some definitions: Hearing a series of spoken sounds and
Oral blending:
Hearing a series of spoken sounds and
merging them together to make a spoken
word. No text is used.
For example, When a teacher calls out ‘b-u-s’,
the children say ‘bus’.
This skill is usually taught before blending and
reading printed words.
Having children practise this orally without reference to graphemes breaks the process down in a way that will be very helpful for many children.

10. Some definitions:
Segmenting: Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (eg h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound to form the word ‘him’.

11. Some definitions: Two letters, which make one sound.
Digraph:
Two letters, which make one sound.
A consonant digraph contains 2 consonants:
sh ck th ll
A vowel digraph contains two vowels or a vowel and a consonant:
ai ee ar oy

12. Some definitions:
Trigraph: Three letters, which make one sound. igh dge tch

13. Some definitions: Split digraph:
A digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent – e.g. make

14. CVC words
Consonant – vowel – consonant A CVC word does not have to be a three letter word. It does have three phonemes…and three graphemes in CVC order.

15. CVC words – clarifying some Which of these are CVC words?
p i g c h i c k
s h i p c a r
b o y sing
f i l l h u f f
s o n g f o r
d a y m i s s
Which of the above are not CVC words? Segment the phonemes; listen to the sounds.
Some words contain a vowel digraph and are therefore not a CVC word e.g. ‘day’.

16. CVC words – clarifying some misunderstandings
p i g CVC c h i c k CVC
s h i p CVC c a r CV
b o y CV s i ng CVC
f i l l CVC h u f f CVC
s o n g CVC f o r CV
d a y CV m i s s CVC
Which of the above are not CVC words? Segment the phonemes; listen to the sounds.
Some words contain a vowel digraph and are therefore not a CVC word e.g. ‘day’ /d/-/ay/ so this is a C V word.

17. Your phonics subject knowledge – what do you need?
To know the terminology and use it accurately
To be able to hear all the phonemes in words (segment)
To understand the relationship between letters and sounds (GPCs / PGCs)
To recognise that this is a key aspect of subject knowledge for all primary school teachers