1. Information for Parents November 2012
Letters and Sounds
Information for Parents
November 2012

2. Phonics at a glance Phonics is… Skills of segmentation and blending
Knowledge of the alphabetic code.

4. Activities we do to encourage phase 1 skills…

5. Phase 1 of letters and sounds
There are 7 aspects of this phase:
Environmental sounds.
Instrumental sounds
Body percussion
Rhythm and rhyme
Alliteration (words that begin with the same sound)
Voice Sounds
Oral blending and segmenting

10. Sound Tray

13. All phase 1 activities are designed to help children:
Listen attentively (active listening – not just responding through habit)
Enlarge their vocabulary
Speak confidently to adults and other children
Discriminate sounds
Reproduce audibly the sounds they hear, in order, all through the word, emphasising clear speech
Use sound talk to break up a word (c-a-t)

14. Phonics Consists of: Identifying sounds in spoken words
Recognising the common spellings of each phoneme.
Blending phonemes into words for reading.
Segmenting words into phonemes for spelling.

15. How many phonemes can you hear in
Some Definitions
A Phoneme
This is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
How many phonemes can you hear in
cat?

16. A phoneme you hear
A grapheme you see

17. Phase 2 In order to progress in phase 2- children need to be able to:
Distinguish between speech and other sounds
Hear sounds in words
Orally blend sounds to build words
Recognise rhyming words
Listening activities continue to be an important part of phase 2 in order to develop these skills

18. Phase 2 continued
The purpose of phase 2 is to teach at least 19 letters and move children on from orally building sounds into words, to blending and segmenting with letters. They are also taught to read by sight ‘Tricky words’ that can not be read by sounding. The first 5 tricky words are: I the to no go

19. Enunciation (The correct way to say a sound)
Teaching phonics requires a technical skill in enunciation.
Phonemes (sounds) should be articulated clearly and precisely.

20. The sequence in which letters are taught
Letters are taught in small groups
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

21. Activities we do in phase 2
Looking at letter shapes as initial sounds: tell me something that begins with … I spy choose a toy – what sound does it begin with, can you show me a letter…
Listening to sounds to blend – action game can you c,l,a,p? Robot game
Looking at sounds to blend – sounding out words – treasure chest game
Splitting up words in order to spell them- segmenting- what sounds can you hear in….

22. Other key points to phase 2
Letters are taught as sounds – children need to know the sound first and then the letter name.
Children will practise letter formation but are able to use tools like magnetic letters in order to use their phonics skills, even if their fine motor skills are not yet well developed.
They will be encouraged to first read individual words and then phrases. The first words they read may be VC or CVC words. (We will give them a reading book when they know at least 20 letter sounds and the phase 2 words.)
They will be encouraged to write words and then phrases
Writing that is not recognisable to an adult is called emergent writing and is all part of their learning to write journey, and should be encouraged.

23. Phase 3
Children entering phase three will know about 19 letter sounds and be able to blend and segment simple two-letter words e.g. it, on. They may also be able to blend and segment three-letter words.

24. Phase 3 teaches:
the remaining 25 phonemes, many of which consist of two letters e.g. oo, sh
the letter names
the tricky words he, she, me, we, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are.
We continue to practise and develop the blending and segmenting skills begun in phase 2.

25. Grapheme Key Vocabulary
Digraph
Trigraph
Split diagraph
2 letters making one sound ( ai, ee, oo)
3 letters making one sound ( igh , dge )
Where the two letters are not adjacent
( a-e, e-e )

26. ear, air, ure, er, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo
Sounds covered in Phase 3
Letter Progression:
Set 6 - j, v, w, x
Set 7 - y, z, zz, qu
Consonant digraphs:
ch, sh, th, ng
Graphemes:
ear, air, ure, er, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo

27. Issues arising from phase 3
Learning to spot digraphs when reading
confusing th and f
learning to blend more quickly and recognise some words on sight so that reading isn’t too labour-intensive
attempting to read and write multi-syllable words
trying to sound out words using letter names rather than sounds

28. Phase 4
This is a consolidation unit. There are no new graphemes to learn. Reading and spelling of tricky words continues.
Segmenting adjacent consonants in words and applying this in spelling.
Blending adjacent consonants in words and applying this skill when reading unfamiliar texts.

29. They are assessed regularly and groupings are sorted accordingly.
The children always work within the phase that is appropriate to their level of learning.
They are assessed regularly and groupings are sorted accordingly.
Therefore the suggested model of year group and corresponding phase, does not always go hand in hand with the year group that your child is actually in.

30. Useful web sites www.oxfordowl.co.uk