Reading and Writing In Nursery and Reception Information for Parents 13-10-2016

Successful readers and writers have lots of early opportunities to: Talk and Listen without distractions eg tablets, TV etc Share books and have stories read to them Play listening games Sing songs and rhymes All these things will help to build up connections in the brain, an enjoyment of language and confidence to try things out.

Phonics. Phonics is one of the ways we teach early reading and writing Phonics is the knowledge of the alphabetic code The skills of segmenting and blending Phonics is a highly structured programme and children are taught in progressive phases Children in Reception and KS1 have a daily 20 minute phonics session

What do Children Learn? Letters have names, but letters also make sounds Sounds are represented by a single letter, or a group of letters. Sounds can be put together to read words. We call this blending. Words can be split into their separate sounds and written down (segmenting)

Phonics in Foundation Stage Nursery – Phase 1 Sing alphabet song to learn the names. Hearing and identifying sounds is the skill which will support your child to learn how to read and write.

Hearing and identifying sounds. Listening Walks to identify sounds in the environment. When walking home from school: listen for loud and soft sounds; play ‘next person to hear...’ and ‘I hear with my little ear’. Sound lotto

Hearing and identifying sounds. Creating our own sounds with our voices, with body percussion and with bought and home-made instruments. Create your own sounds with your feet and things you find such as leaves and sticks. Box of instruments and homemade Sticks and dry leaves

Hearing and identifying sounds. Looking for rhythm in words (how many syllables?). Using percussion to accompany our speech. Clap the syllables in children’s names and names of familiar objects, animals and people. Animal pictures

Hearing and identifying sounds. Listening for start sounds in words. Play ‘I went to the shops and bought...’ Play ‘I spy’ saying the sound rather than the letter. Make silly tongue twisters. Tell stories with characters starting with the same sound, then make mistakes for children to spot. Objects Tongue Twister CD Betha Bus game

Hearing and identifying sounds. Rhyming words. Singing nursery rhymes; leaving pauses in rhyming books for children to predict; reading rhyming poetry and making up silly rhyming names. Two Little Dickie Birds example

Hearing and identifying sounds. Hearing end sounds. Identifying the last sound heard in a word. Speaking very clearly. Hearing middle sounds. Robot games: Alien speaking. Making up silly words and names.

Oral Blending. Saying words in their units of sound. Robot talk with familiar simple words. Play ‘Simon says touch your h-ea-d’.

Reception Phase 2 When children can hear sounds confidently we introduce them to linking sounds to letters. Using Jolly Phonics songs and actions. It is important that children always hear Pure Sounds. So we need to work together on this. Jolly Phonics songs Go throughn alphabet pure sounds

c a t Blending for reading. See the letter and say the pure sound. Put the sounds together to hear the word. c a t Demonstrate cvc words

Segmenting for spelling. Say the word in sound bits like Metal Mike. Use the letters children know to build simple words. c a t Demonstrate cvc words Challenge parents to build word using satpin

Order Phase 2 letters and sounds are introduced. s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll ss

s a t p i n pat tap at sat nap sit tin pin pit it These are the first 6 letters and sounds introduced. Letters are introduced in groups as children can instantly read and write simple words. pat tap at sat nap sit tin pin pit it

Nonsense Words nin sas pas

Phase 3 First the remaining single letter sounds are taught j v w x y z zz qu Then we teach digraphs and trigraphs (where two or three letters are used to represent one sound) ch sh th ng ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er

Phase 3 a i This is when knowing the letter names is useful. Telling children the sounds ‘a’ and ‘i’ make /ae/ is confusing. We use letter names to explain this. By the end of Phase 3 children will have learnt one way of representing each of the 44 sounds which make up the English language.

Phase 4 Taught at the end of Reception and beginning of Year 1 Children are taught to blend consonants at: the end of words, (cvcc words) eg past, milk the beginning of words (ccvc words) eg stop, train The beginning and end of words (ccvcc words) eg stamp, flask

Letter Formation Alongside the recognition of letters, blending and segmenting, children are taught to form letters correctly This year we have moved to a fully cursive script Formation sheets.

Tricky words Words that are not phonetically decodeable e.g. was, the, I Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become decodeable once we have learned alternative ways of representing sounds (Year 1) e.g. out, there, want

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? rash? paint? shorter?

A grapheme These are the letters that represent the phoneme. The grapheme could be 1 letter, 2 letters or more. t ai igh

A word always has the same number of phonemes and graphemes! A phoneme you hear A grapheme you see A word always has the same number of phonemes and graphemes!

This is where it gets tricky! Phonemes are represented by graphemes. A grapheme can consist of 1, 2 or more letters. A phoneme can be represented/spelled in more than one way ( cat, kennel, choir) The same grapheme may represent more than one phoneme ( me, met)

Grapheme Key Vocabulary 2 letters making one sound (ai, ee, oo) 3 letters making one sound (igh , dge ) Where the two letters are not adjacent ( a-e, o-e ) bake, pole Digraph Trigraph Split diagraph (Year 1)

Helpful websites. www.mrthorne.com http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks