Letters and Sounds An approach to synthetic phonics.

What is Synthetic Phonics? Focus on learning ‘tools’ for reading. ‘Phonics first and fast’ Differing from approaches that focus on the whole word approach – ‘look and say’.

Letters and Sounds Broken into 6 Phases of increasing complexity. Focuses on skills needed to read and spell. Is meant to be taught throughout Reception and KS1 Was introduced by the last Government as an example scheme. Other schemes are available, such as Jolly Phonics and Letterland.

The Skills: Grapheme/Phoneme correspondence. Blending Segmenting Learning ‘tricky words’.

Grapheme/Phoneme correspondence (GPC) GRAPHEME = a written symbol representing a sound. (LETTER PATTERN) PHONEME = a sound that exists in a language. (SOUND) GPC = matching the two up! Skill one:

In English graphemes (LETTER PATTERN) are made up of letters or groups of letters Using one letter (Single letter sounds) went Using two letters together (Digraph) week Using two letters separated ( Split Digraph) wine Using three letters together ( Trigraph) might (Using four letters together ( Quadgraph?) eight) Skill one:

Phonemes In English we use around 44 phonemes (depending on our accent) But there are several graphemes for each phoneme! might sky winewine Skill one: (articulation of phonemes clip)

Skill 2: Blending for reading Identifying the phonemes in a word and blending them together to make a word! Sound buttons are a common approach week t r i p (Phase 2 Blending clip)

Skill 3: Segmenting for spelling Involves breaking a heard word into its phonemes. Later this leads to matching graphemes for spelling. (Phase 4 Segmenting clip)

Skill 4: Learning ‘Tricky words’ Used to be known as ‘High Frequency Words’ or ‘Sight Words’ They are common words that are not spelt with a common spelling pattern Each Phase has its own set of ‘tricky words’ Letters and Sounds suggests that we should highlight the uncommon spelling pattern to the children to reduce miscommunication. Phase 4 Tricky words clip

Phase Structure Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6 But of course not all children learn at the same rate!

Phase 1 Taught in the very early years, all to do with recognising sounds in the environment etc. Vast majority of our children are beyond this on entry.

Phase 2 s a t p i n md g ockckeu r hb fffl llss notogothe (Reading only)

jvwxyzzzqu ch shthngaieeigh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air er Phase 3 heme shewebewasmy youher they allare (Reading only but spelling Phase 2 tricky words)

Phase 4 This phase doesn’t introduce any new graphemes, only consolidates the previously learnt ones. Introduces a focus on words with adjacent consonants that can easily be mis-spelt e.g. dump someonesaidcomedo so were whenhavethere outlikelittlewhat (Reading only but spelling Phase 3 tricky words)

ay Phase 5 oywhouirphieueew eaaw oe au a_ee_ei_e o_e u_e Phase 5 also teaches different pronunciations of graphemes for example: find, wind. Should be able to read and spell all 100 most frequent words (which include all the previous tricky words).

Phase 6 This Phase focuses on teaching grammatical spelling patterns such as adding -ed for the past tense.

What can I do at home?

Read with your child  Don’t worry that you may not be ‘doing it right.’  Be prepared to spend longer with some books than others.  Read any ‘notes for adults’ in the books.  Get your child into the habit of looking at the words first rather than relying too much on the pictures.

Write with your child  Encourage your children to write at every opportunity.  Encourage them to sound out the words they want to write and worry about the correct spelling later.  Practise the spellings of words that are sent home to learn.