Phonics Meeting for Parents

Why do we teach phonics? Phonics provides children with the basic skills to apply to their reading and writing. Children then use these basic skills to improve their confidence and skills in reading and writing and use throughout their school life. At Mattishall Primary, we use a combination of ‘Jolly Phonics’ and ‘Letters and Sounds’ as our teaching resource.

What is Jolly Phonics? Jolly Phonics teaches phonics through a range of different actions to suit each of the 42 letter sounds. This multi-sensory approach is very motivating and active for the children. The letter sounds are taught in a specific order and are split into seven groups. In Jolly Phonics there are 5 skills that are taught to ensure children can be confident readers and writers. 1.Learning the letter sounds 2.Learning letter formation 3.Blending 4.Identifying the sounds in words (Segmenting) 5.Tricky words

What is Letters and Sounds? It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. There are 6 phases in total. In year 1 we concentrate on Phase 5. Phase 5 is more complex and the children learn more graphemes for the phonemes that they already know and different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.

Definitions Phoneme This is the smallest units of sound in a word. E.g. cat has got three phonemes … c - a - t

Definitions Grapheme These are the letters that represent the phoneme when written down. E.g. cat has got three graphemes also … c - a - t . This is what the word looks like when written down. A word always has the same amount of phonemes and graphemes.

Blending Children learn to read by recognising the graphemes in a word E.g. c - a - t They then blend them together to pronounce the word ‘cat’

Segmenting Chopping up the word orally to be able to spell it E.g. Identifying that the word cat is split up into 3 phonemes; c - a - t Then writing them down in order

Digraphs and Trigraphs Digraphs: 2 letters that make sound e.g. ai, or, ee, sh Trigraphs: 3 letters that make 1 sound e.g. igh, ure, ear

Tricky Words These are words that are not phonetically decodable e.g. the, their, were Some are only tricky words now because the phonemes have not yet been taught - Play tricky trucks

Lesson Format Every lesson is split up into 4 sections. Revise: The children revise sounds they have previously learnt. Teach: The children are taught a new phoneme/grapheme and are taught new tricky words. Practice: The children practising blending and segmenting using the new phoneme/grapheme and/or tricky words. Apply: The children apply the new learning by reading or writing sentences involving the new phoneme/grapheme and/or tricky words.

Phase 5 The children are now learning alternative spellings and pronunciations for phonemes/graphemes they have already learnt e.g. ‘ay’ is a new spelling for the phoneme ‘ai’ they have already learnt.

How can you help at home? Read with your child each night Read a range of other stories and ask questions Provide fun games to practise segmenting and blending skills Go on a tricky word hunt Play phonics games Practise phoneme/grapheme cards Play ‘I spy’ Sing the alphabet Play online games e.g. phonics play Play trash/treasure game

Phonics Screening Check The phonics screening check occurs at the end of year 1. It will be carried out in June. The children use their blending skills to read a range of real and pretend words. The children have already been introduce to past examples of the check and by the time the check comes round, the children will be used to the style of the check and will hopefully feel comfortable with it. We also do a lot of reading of real and pretend words during our phonic sessions. I will organise another parents session nearer the time, to give you more information about the check.

Phonics Activities Trash/Treasure game Phonics dice Phonics threading Practise reading real/pretend words from example screening check Phonics game ‘Pop’ game Phonics play website (ICT suite) Letters and sounds website (ICT suite)