1. Teaching and Learning Phonics at RA Butler
Wednesday 28th November 2018 JC

2. Aims JC To share how phonics is taught.
To develop parents’ confidence in helping their children with phonics and reading
To teach the basics of phonics and some useful phonics terms
To outline the different stages in phonic development
To show examples of activities and resources we use to teach phonics
To introduce ‘The Big Spell’ JC

3. Letters and Sounds
A high quality phonics resource produced and recommended by the government
Takes account of the best practice seen in the most successful early years settings and schools. JC

4. Why teach phonics? JC
The ability to read and write well is a vital skill for all children, paving the way for an enjoyable and successful school experience.
Phonics helps children to develop good reading and spelling skills
e.g. cat can be sounded out for reading and spelling

5. + Phonics is all about using … skills for reading and spelling
Segmenting and blending
knowledge of the alphabet + JC
Learning phonics will help your child to become a good reader and writer.

6. Daily Phonics Sessions with their class teacherJC
Every child in FS2 and KS1 learns daily phonics with their class teacher.
Phonics gradually progresses to learning spellings – rules etc.
Children in KS2 will still be talking about phonics, but more closely linked to spelling rather than reading.
Every day the children have 20 minute sessions of phonics with their class teacher.
•Pitched high with a high level of challenge included
It is a fast paced approach
Lessons encompass a range of games, songs and rhymes
Support and interventions put in place quickly to support those children who are not keeping pace with the class (take place in the afternoon)
We use the Letters and Sounds planning document to support the teaching.
There are 6 phonics phases which the children work through

7. Phonic terms your child will learn at school
Phonemes: The smallest units of sound that are found within a word.
A phoneme is something you hear. JC
Phonemes -
How many phonemes can you hear in cat?

8. Grapheme: The spelling of the sound e.g. th
A grapheme is what you see
Children need to practise recognising the grapheme and saying the phoneme that it represents. JC
The grapheme could be 1 letter, 2 letters or more! We often refer to these as sound buttons:
t ai igh
Demo on the flip chart using sound buttons

9. Digraph: Two letters that make one sound when read e.g. sh
Trigraphs: Three letters that make one sound e.g. igh
CVC: Stands for consonant, vowel, consonant e.g c a t
Tricky words: Words that cannot easily be decoded, sometimes referred to as ‘red’ words. JC

10. Sound buttons
Using ‘sound buttons’ can you say how many phonemes are in each word?
shelf
dress
sprint
string JC
Answers on next slide

11. Did you get it right? shelf = sh – e – l – f = 4 phonemes
dress = d - r - e – ss = 4 phonemes
sprint = s – p – r – i – n – t = 6 phonemes
string = s – t – r – i – ng = 5 phonemes JC

12. Segmenting and Blending
Children need to be able to hear a whole word and say every sound that they hear.
e.g. If the teacher says ‘dog’ the child should be able to say ‘d o g – dog’
Blending:
Children need to be able to hear the separate sounds in a word and then blend them together to say the whole word.
e.g. If the teacher says ‘c a t’ the child should be able to say ‘c a t – cat’ AW

13. Segmenting
bed = /b/ /e/ /d/
Blending:
/t/ /i/ /n/ = tin AW

14. Phase 3: Learning the long vowel phonemes
They will learn another 26 phonemes:
j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu
ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
They will use these phonemes (and the ones from Phase 2) to read and spell words:
chip, shop, thin, ring, pain, feet, night,
boat, boot, look, farm, fork, burn,
town, coin, dear, fair, sure AW
Children will have covered Phase 3 in Reception, however, after 5 weeks of phase 5 we often find it helpful to re-visit phase 3 & 4 to ensure there are no learning gaps

15. Phase 4: Introducing consonant clusters: reading and spelling words with four or more phonemes
Phase 4 doesn’t introduce any new phonemes.
It focuses on reading and spelling longer words with the phonemes they already know. CCVC (black), CCCVC (strong), CVCC (felt), CCVCC (blend) AW
Children move into phase 4 when they know all the phonemes from phases 2 and 3 and can use them to read and spell simple words (blending to read and segmenting to spell). (usually in EYFS)

16. Phase 5 Teach new graphemes for reading
ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e
Learn alternative pronunciations of graphemes (the same grapheme can represent more than one phoneme):
Fin/find, hot/cold, cat/cent, got/giant, AW
but/put, cow/blow, tie/field, eat/bread, farmer/her, hat/what, yes/by/very, chin/school/chef, out/shoulder/could/you.

17. Learning all the variations!
Learning that the same phoneme can be represented in more than one way:
burn
first
term
heard
work AW
Read the words – emphasise that they all sound the same but are spelt in different ways.

18. Learning all the variations!
Learning that the same grapheme can represent more than one phoneme:
meat bread
he bed
bear hear
cow low AW

19. Teaching the split digraph
A split diagraph is a two-letter sound that has another letter in the middle.
tie time
toe tone
cue cube
pie pine AW
We don’t call it ‘magic e’ or ‘modifying e’
We call it ‘friend on the end’

20. Spelling
Alongside phonics Year 1 also begin to learn the rules for spelling. Children look at plurals, root words, prefixes and the suffixes ed, est, ing, er AW
Children will learn about past tense, rules for adding ‘ing’, ‘ed, ‘er’, ‘est’, and irregular verbs, plural rules,
‘tion’ and ‘sion’ words
Silent letters
le, el, al, il at the end of words
Suffixes e.g. -ness, -ful, -less,
Contractions e.g. Can’t, couldn’t, hasn’t

21. Key Vocabulary: Vowels and consonants – a, e, i, o, u,
Prefix- added to the beginning of an existing word in order to create a new word with a different meaning e.g. happy/unhappy
Suffix -  letter or group of letters added at the end of a word to make a new word e.g. quickly, +ly
Root word - a basic word with no prefix or suffix added to it (a prefix is a string of letters that go at the start of a word
Compound word - A compound word is a combination of two or more words that function as a single unit of meaning e.g. supermarket
Plural – the plural of a word is used when referring to more than one person or thing.
Common exception words - words in which the English spelling code works in an unusual or uncommon way. They are not words for which phonics 'doesn't work', but they may be exceptions to spelling rules, or words which use a particular combination of letters to represent sound patterns in a rare or unique way. JC

22. Structure of a typical lesson
Revisit/Review
Teach
Practise
Apply JC
Revisit/Review - practise previously learned graphemes
Teach - Teach new graphemes; Teach tricky words
Practise - Practise blending and reading words with the new GPC. Practice segmenting and spelling words with the new GPC
Apply - Read or write a sentence using one or more HF words and words containing new graphemes.

24. Letter Formation Children
At RAB we have adopted a cursive handwriting approach. This means the children in reception have learnt the pre-cursive letters i.e. knowing that each letter starts from the line with a ‘whoosh’ and ends with a hook. JC
Children

25. Year 1 Home Learning Spellings Autumn 2
The Big Spell!
Every half term the children will bring home 5 words each week. These 5 words consist of the expected vocabulary year 1 children are required to know and spell by the end of the year. These include high frequency words, common exception words and some topic related vocabulary.
As before, the children will be expected to learn their spelling words at home using a range of strategies they use in class. Example of these can be found on the website under- About us; Phonics Teaching Programme; Spelling activity cards.
At the end of each half term a reminder of all the whole half terms spelling words will come home ready for a final practise over the holiday.
The ‘Big Spell’ will consist of 5 words selected from all of the words that have been sent home over the previous half term.
To celebrate their hard work and effort a special spelling assembly will take place where children will receive certificates for improvement and consistency.
Year 1 Home Learning Spellings Autumn 2
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Weeks 7 &8
BIG SPELL WORDS AW

26. Is there anything I can do at home?JC

27. At home... Read everyday with your child if possible
Help your child practise their big spell words (these sheets do not need to come back to school)
Play ‘I spy’
Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some two-grapheme (letter) combinations, eg: r-ai-n = rain blending for reading rain = r-ai-n segmenting for spelling
Praise your child for trying out words
Look at tricky words
Look for phonic games online
Play pairs with words and pictures JC

28. Learning to read should be fun for both children and parents.
Don’t forget…
Learning to read should be fun for both children and parents. JC

29. Any questions?