4th March 2015

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.

Phoneme Graphemes Segmenting and blending Digraph Trigraph Split digraph Abbreviations

 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.

 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

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

 This phase consolidates all the children have learnt in the previous phases.

 Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these graphemes.  Vowel digraphs: wh, ph, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, ew, oe, au  Split digraphs: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e

 The focus is on learning spelling rules for suffixes. -s -es -ing -ed -er -est -y -en -ful -ly -ment -ness

 Breaking down words for spelling. cat

Queen qu ee n

Building words from phonemes to read. c a t

Qu ee n queen

Revisit/reviewFlashcards to practice phonemes learnt so far. TeachTeach new phoneme - air PracticeRead or write e.g ‘Buried treasure’ Air, zair, fair, hair, lair, pair, vair, sair, thair ApplyRead or write captions: The goat had a long beard. The quack was right in his ear.

Every Year 1 child in the country will be taking the phonics screening check in the same week in June. The aim of the check is to ensure that all children are able to read by the end of year two. This ‘midpoint check’ will ensure that we have a clear understanding of what the children need to learn in year 2.

The check is very similar to tasks the children already complete during phonics lessons. Children will be asked to segment a word and blend the sounds together.eg d-o-g - dog The focus of the check is to see which sounds the children know and therefore the children will be asked to read made up ‘nonsense’ words.

The screening will take place throughout the week beginning Monday 15 th June. The children can’t retake the test at any other time so it is very important your child is in school during this week. The check has been designed so that children of all abilities will be able to take part.

The children will complete the check one at a time in a quiet area of the school. Teaching staff will conduct all of the screening checks with the children. The screening will only take 5-10mins with each child.

Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when reading or writing. Focusing particularly on spotting more unusual sound patterns. E.g. Digraph- 2 letters making one sound cow Trigraphs- 3 letters making one sound night Split digraphs- 2 vowels with a consonant in between. Used to be known as the magic e! spine - i_e

Encourage your child to use their sound mat when writing and use their actions to find the sound they need. Children can practise their phonics by playing games online. There are many phonic games for children to access at home on the computer.

REMEMBER: Phonics is not the only thing needed to become a fluent reader. Please continue to read with your child each night and encourage them to: Sound out Re-read to check it makes sense. Use pictures for clues. Ask questions about the book. And most importantly ENJOY READING!

What is Guided Reading? We aim to ensure that each child will have a guided reading session at least once a week.

How do Guided Reading Sessions work? A variety of activities will be set out- for example Reading topic books Grammar/ phonic based activity Guided Reading with the teacher Writing Table These will be rotated throughout the week.

Children will be learning about- Decoding Comprehension Retrieving information- inference, deduction and prediction