1. Phonics Workshop for Parents
North Elmham Primary School
Phonics Workshop for Parents

2. Synthetic Phonics We use an approach called Synthetic Phonics.
Phonics for reading
Children are taught to break down a word and say each phoneme (sound).
Phonics for writing
Children are taught to reverse this process, saying the word and segment the sounds
Blend to read
Segment to spell
e.g. children are taught to break a 3 letter word down and pronounce each phoneme (sound) for each letter in turn, i.e. ‘cat’ would be broken down into
C-a-t.
Synthetic phonics for writing is the reverse of the sequence
Children are taught to say a word they wish to write, segment it into its phonemes and say them in turn, e.g. d-o-g. the children would write a grapheme (letter) for each of the phonemes heard and then produce the written word ‘dog’.

3. Key terms… Phoneme – the smallest unit of a sound in a word.
Grapheme – what we write to represent a sound (phoneme). This can be more than one letter eg. ai, igh
Oral blending – hearing a group of sounds and ‘merging’ them together to make a spoken word.
Blending – recognising the letter sounds in a written word and then ‘merging’ them eg. s/a/t

4. Key terms continued… Digraph – 2 letters that make one sound.
Consonant digraphs – two consonants next to each other that make one sound – sh, ck, th
Vowel digraphs – contains at least one vowel to make one sound - ai, ee, ar, oy

5. Key terms continued… Trigraph – 3 letters that make one sound. igh ear
air

6. The Phonic Alphabet
They should be taught to write each letter, forming it accurately.
The English language has 44 phonemes
Children are taught to produce the sounds as shortly as possible
Stretchy or bouncy
Stretchy or bouncy
British spoken English is generally reckoned to use 44 sounds or ‘phonemes’. Technically a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can make a difference to a meaning of a word. 20 of these are vowel sounds and 24 are consonant sounds.

7. Enunciation Teaching phonics requires a technical skill in enunciation
Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely.
Lisa

8. Jolly Phonics Each sound is supported by a story, song and action.
Jolly Phonics worksheet
Karen
One of our support materials we use in school is called Jolly Phonics.
We will share with you some of the actions to support the sounds.

9. Letters and Sounds 6 phases Phase 1-listening to sounds
Phase 2 and beyond- introducing the phonemes.
Duncan
New Letters and Sounds document is split into 6 phases.

10. Phase 1:Good listening skills
Speaking and listening skills (games)
Rhyme
Alliteration
Duncan
The development of speaking and listening skills
Listening games
Rhyme etc
Alliteration- Silly Sally slipped on a slippery snake.

11. Phase 2 s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll ss
19 phonemes and graphemes
Blend and segment
Tricky words
s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll ss
Lisa
We introduce the 1st 19 phonemes and their matching graphemes.
Phonic time 4 times a week where we introduce and practise phonic activities-reading, writing etc

12. Phase 3 j v w x y zz qu ch sh th ng ai ee or ie oa oi oo ou ar er
Next 25 graphemes
j v w x y zz qu ch sh th ng ai ee or ie oa oi oo ou ar er
Duncan
Introduce another 25 graphemes
Move onto harder middle vowel phonemes for e.g. ‘light’ the children are taught ‘I’ sound is represented by the letters ‘igh’ in the middle of words.
They are then taught alternative ‘I’ spellings in phase 5, e.g. ‘ie’ (tie) and ‘i-e’ (like).

13. Phase 4
At Phase 4, we teach children to read and spell longer words using the same graphemes but containing adjacent consonants (shown in blue).
E.g. strain sleep fright stoat spoon
Phase 5
We teach children that the same grapheme can represent a different sound. E.g. snow cow
We begin teaching spelling choices and rules.
E.g Is it ‘train’, ‘trayn’ or ‘trane’? This last part of Phase 5 moves on from phonics to spelling. Learning to spell each word correctly is a long process .

14. Phase 6
concentrates on making the correct spelling choice, especially for the long vowels.
By this phase, children are learning spelling rather than phonics.
E.g. dreem or dream? lite or light? caik or cake?
Children are taught spelling rules including how to add suffixes to make longer words:
E.g stop stops
bunch bunches
light lightest
heavy heaviest
sleep sleeping
play played

15. Techniques we use at school...
Robot arms to blend
Phoneme frames to write
Sound boards
Phoneme buttons
Tapping it out

16. Reading
Your child will read at least twice a week with an adult at school. (once with a parent helper)
Any reading that you do at home should be logged in the Home-School Diary.
Please continue to choose a library book.
In the library, coloured cards - match the schemes we use
Karen

17. Tricky Words
I will send these home in coloured sets which match the words we are learning in school.
They are ‘tricky’ because we cannot use our phonics to sound them out. EG. Said
We need to learn to read and write them by sight! This helps with the fluency.
How?
Using magnetic letters on the fridge
Writing word cards and hiding them around the house
Whatever suits your child – make it FUN!
Karen

18. How to help at home
Challenge the children to find objects that begin with a certain sound.
Play ‘I Spy’ with phonemes not letter names.
Practise letter formation.
Play rhyming bingo, lotto and extend rhyming strings.
Play games with word cards.
Make sentences with word cards.
Duncan

19. Useful websites…
The following websites have some free phonics games for children to play:
ay/
Also, check out ‘Mr Thorne Does Phonics’ on youtube.

20. Any questions?
MANY THANKS TO YOU ALL!