1. 22nd September 2015

2. E ARLY READING... Looking at words will initially be like looking at patterns of shapes on a page.

3. What is phonics and how can I help my child at home?

4. P HONICS IS ALL ABOUT USING … Learning phonics will help your child to become a good reader and writer skills for reading and spelling + knowledge of the alphabet

5. In school, we follow the Letters and Sounds programme. Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills which consists of six phases.

6. Phoneme Graphemes Segmenting and blending Digraph Trigraph Split digraph T ERMINOLOGY

7. Phonemes: The smallest units of sound that are found within a word Grapheme: The spelling of the sound e.g. Th Diagraph: Two letters that make one sound when read Trigraphs: Three letters that make one sound CVC: Stands for consonant, vowel, consonant. Segmenting is breaking up a word into its sounds. Blending : Putting the sounds together to read a word Tricky words: Words that cannot easily be decoded.

8. P HASE 1 There are 7 aspects with 3 strands. A1 – Environmental A2 – Instrumental sounds A3 – Body Percussion A4 – Rhythm and rhyme A5 – Alliteration A6 – Voice sounds A7 – Oral blending and segmenting.

9. H OW CAN I HELP AT HOME ? Nursery rhymes, songs, action rhymes. Add sound effects to stories. Music and movement: rhythm, guess the instrument. Talking about sounds: listening walks, loud/soft, high/low, silly noises. Speaking & listening: silly sentences “Happy Harry hops”, mimics, animal sounds.

10. P HASE 2 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

11. S AYING THE SOUNDS Sounds should be articulated clearly and precisely. http://www.teachfind.com/national- strategies/letter-and-sounds- %E2%80%93-articulation-phonemes- vowels-and-consonants

12. W E TEACH USING J OLLY P HONICS... We teach the letter sound and use a mnemonic or action with a song to help the children remember.

13. P HASE 3 Set 6: j, v, w, x Set 7: y, z, zz, qu Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

14. P HASE 4 This phase consolidates all the children have learnt in the previous phases.

15. P HONICS W ORDS Your children will learn to use the term: Segmenting Children need to be able to hear a whole word and say every sound that they hear.

16. S EGMENTING Breaking down words for spelling. cat

17. S EGMENTING Queen qu ee n

18. P HONICS W ORDS Your children will learn to use the term: Blending Children need to be able to hear the separate sounds in a word and then blend them together to say the whole word.

19. B LENDING Building words from phonemes to read. c a t

20. B LENDING Qu ee n queen

21. H OW CAN I HELP AT HOME ? Oral blending: the robot game Children need to practise hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a word. For example, you say ‘b-u-s’, and your child says ‘bus’. “What’s in the box?” is a great game for practising this skill.

22. W HAT DOES A P HONICS LESSON LOOK LIKE ? Revisit/reviewAlphabet song (Mr Thorne!)Flashcards/phoneme fans to practice phonemes learnt so far/moving games! TeachTeach new phoneme ‘a’ PracticeGames eg Buried treasure/messy play/ magnetic letters/boards/shopping lists ApplyRead/write captions: A man sat on a pin.

23. R ESOURCES http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk

24. R ESOURCES http://www.letters-and- sounds.com/phase-2-games.html

25. R ESOURCES http://www.topmarks.co.u k/english-games/3-5- years/letters-and-sounds

26. R ESOURCES... There are lots of fantastic resources online. Mr Thorne and Geraldine the Giraffe are firm favourites! Twinkl phonics is a great ipad app.

27. H IGH F REQUENCY W ORDS... Word sets – practise at home; reinforced in class. Changed every week if known. Please make notes in the back of the Phonics book. Lots of these words cannot be sounded out, they need to be learnt by sight eg was, said.

28. D ON ’ T FORGET … Learning to read should be fun for both children and parents.

29. Y EAR 1 P HONICS T EST

30. S UMMARY... Phonics...sound books. HFW bingo games – notes in back of phonics books; changed every week if known. Reading books – changed Mondays and Thursdays if reading diaries have been signed. Any questions.....