1. Phonics at Elmtree
Tuesday 20th October 2015
The aims of the session:
1. To support you with your understanding of the key phonics principles.
2. To show you the progression through the six phases.
3. To explain the Phonics Screening Check and the new Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar tests.
4. To give you ideas for how to help your children at home.

2. What is Phonics? d-o-g -> dog ch-i-ck -> chick
Phonics is the link between letters and the sounds they make.
Young children are taught to read by breaking words up into their separate sounds (phonemes)
They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word e.g.
d-o-g -> dog ch-i-ck -> chick
This is just one part of reading and writing, alongside sight-recognition (knowing the ‘tricky words’ by heart) and comprehension (understanding the text)
These are the first strategies children are taught to read words but they become less important as they become more competent readers.
There are 44 phonemes (sounds)
in the English language:

3. Important terms: Phoneme- is a spoken sound e.g. ai in rain
Grapheme- is the different ways to write the sound e.g. ai, ay, a-e, ey, eigh, a
Blending- is reading the sounds in the correct order to work out the word
Decoding- is using their knowledge of sounds to help them read an unknown word
Tricky word- is a word that cannot be decoded using phonics e.g. was, Mr, come
High-frequency word- are very common in the English language e.g. went, the, there

4. Daily Sessions
All Nursery, Reception and KS1 classes have daily sessions which last up to 20 minutes
We use the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme
The children in KS1 are split across the year group
The sessions are made up of 4 parts: * A recap of previous learning (revisit and review) * Some new learning e.g. a sound (teach) * A chance for the children to ‘have a go’ (practise) * A chance to use that new knowledge in a different way e.g. reading a sentence (apply)
A range of resources are used to make the sessions interactive and engaging

5. Pronunciation It is very easy to say the sounds incorrectly!
It is important that children do not learn to add an ‘uh’ sound e.g. s not suh
We call these their pure sounds
Here is a video that demonstrates the 44 phonemes within the English Language:

6. Phase 1 The 6 Phases This Phase is covered in Nursery and involves:
Listening to sounds in the environment, making sounds with instruments and also with their bodies.
Joining in with activities that involve rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, making vocal sounds and breaking words up into their sounds- oral blending.
Developing the children’s ability to ‘tune in’ to sounds, memorise them, and talk about them.

7. Phase 2 The 6 Phases This Phase is covered in Reception and involves:
Learning 23 graphemes (such as ‘a’ in ‘cat’, ‘b’ in ‘bed’, ‘ll’ in ‘full’ and ‘ck’ in ‘duck’).
Writing the sounds down (rather than just saying them aloud).
Writing some key VC and CVC words such as: it, in, sat, pin, sun, etc.
Reading 2-syllable words (such as: ‘sunbed’) and captions (such as: ‘It is a cat on a mat.’).
Recognising these tricky words by sight: the, to, go, no, I.

8. The 6 Phases
Phase 3
This Phase is initially covered in Reception and involves:
Learning 23 new sounds (such as the ‘ai’ in ‘rain’ and ‘igh’ in ‘light’).
Practising and applying the new sounds through reading and spelling words.
Reading 2-syllable words (such as: ‘lunchbox’) and question captions (such as: ‘Can a duck quack?’).
Recognising these tricky words by sight: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are and spelling the Phase 2 tricky words.

9. The 6 Phases
Phase 4
Should be covered in Reception but reviewed in Year One and is different as it does not introduce any new sounds. It involves:
Consolidating the children’s knowledge of sounds when reading and spelling words.
Reading and writing words with more than one syllable such as: treetop, sunlight, driftwood, etc.
Reading and spelling words with adjacent consonants (consonant digraph or blend), such as: bring, drink, stamp, bump, etc, and also captions such as: ‘I must not stamp on the flowers’.
Recognising these tricky words by sight: said, so, do, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what and spelling the Phase 3 tricky words.

10. The 6 Phases
Phase 5
Should be taught in Year One but reviewed in Year Two and involves:
Learning 19 new graphemes (such as the ‘ay’ in ‘pay’ and ‘au’ in ‘August’) for reading first, and then spelling.
Reading and writing words with two and three syllables such as: ‘unicorn’, ‘furniture’, ‘yesterday’ etc.
Reading a range of captions such as: ‘Rain and snow are part of our winter weather’, ‘Which of these are days of the week?’ etc.
Recognising these tricky words by sight: oh, no, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, and spelling the Phase 4 tricky words.
Teaching alternative sounds for graphemes already taught, such as: ‘ow’ in ‘blow’ and ‘a’ in ‘warm’.

11. Phase 6 The 6 Phases Should be taught in Year Two and involves:
Learning past and present tense (e.g. he went to the shops/he is going to the shops).
Adding suffixes (endings) to words such as: ‘est’ in ‘smallest’ and ‘tion’ in ‘information’ as well as learning the important rules e.g. some consonants are doubled before adding ‘ing’ (such as: hop becomes hopping)
Finding and learning the ‘tricky’ bits in words, as well as rules and patterns to help them in the future e.g. I can spell ‘would’ because I know ‘could’.

12. Phonics Screening Check Y1
The Government want to know that Phonics is being taught properly in schools so they have started “testing” Year 1 children on their ability to decode (read) real and fake words.
The children must read 40 words (20 real and 20 fake)
This year, the pass mark was 32 out of 40.
It takes place in June.

13. Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Test Y2
For the first time, Year Two children will be doing a SPaG test as part of their SATs.
The spelling is similar to the previous test- adding the missing word to the sentence.
The rest involves reading sentences with missing words and choosing the word that makes the most sense.
Adding punctuation to sentences e.g. commas in a list.
Selecting the correct word-type: adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs.
Looking at sentence types: commands, questions, statements and exclamations.
Add s and es to plurals e.g. cars and foxes.
Deciding if something is written in the past or present tense.

14. Top Tips for helping your child at home
Reading their school book e.g. sound-spotting, tricky word practise.
Listening and looking for sounds even when the adult is reading.
Playing games using the tricky words and sound cards sent home.
Magnetic letters e.g. building words.
Using robot voices to break up the sounds in words e.g. can you get your c-oa-t.
Making rhyming strings.
Looking for sounds in the environment.

15. Brilliant Websites
Mr Thorne’s Phonics:
His ‘Geraldine the Giraffe’ videos are particularly funny as the children enjoy correcting her when she gets things wrong!
Jolly Phonics:
They explain how to pronounce the sounds correctly in this video and there is also a wide selection of songs on youtube:
Phase 1 and 2:
Phase 3:
Phonics Play:
This website has a variety of fun games. The Buried Treasure and Obb and Bob games are particularly helpful as the children have to read a range of real and fake ‘alien’ words.
Starfall:
The children can read interactive books with some of the key phonics sounds.

16. Thank you so much for coming.
Any questions?