Phonics Information Evening

Session Outline Background and importance of phonics What is phonics? Structure of phonics teaching Progression through the phases Ideas for supporting phonics

Background to Phonics Following Government guidance called Letters and Sounds. The Intention is to “…equip children who are 5 with the phonic knowledge and skills they need to become fluent readers by the age of 7.” Phonics is crucial, as it aids the early reading development of children.

Blending Blending is the process of saying the individual sounds in a word and then running them together to read the word. E.g d- o- g and making dog. Some sounds (digraphs) are represented by two letters, such as sh.   Some words in English have an irregular spelling and cannot be read by blending, such as said, was and one. These are called the ‘tricky words’ (stinky)

Segmenting The easiest way to know how to spell a word is to listen for the sounds in that word. Take care with digraphs. The word fish, for example, has four letters but only three sounds, f-i-sh. Rhyming games and poems help here.

Structure of Phonics Four times a week for 20 minutes each. Revisiting and revising previous sounds and tricky words. Teaching a new sound or spelling. Practise reading and spelling the new sound. Apply the new sound by reading and writing sentences using words containing the new sound.

Progression End of year 1 the children will complete a National Phonics Screening test. Results of the screening check help to inform the teachers of any gaps in their phonics knowledge that need to be addressed. However, all children progress through the 6 stages.

Phase Two Taught in Reception. Revised in Year 1. The children begin to learn a small selection of sounds which they begin to apply.

Phase Three Children are taught one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes. Children continue to learn to link sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet. Recognise common digraphs such as ‘th’ and trigraphs ‘igh’.

Phase Four Children are taught to read and spell words containing consonant clusters. Children will be able to blend and segment consonant clusters in words and apply this skill when reading and spelling. Children will move from CVC words such as ‘pot’, to more complex words such as ‘crunch’.

Phase Five Children learn to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the phonemes already taught e.g. ou and ow. Children will learn to use these alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes (e.g. the ‘c’ in coat and city). Children begin to recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically.

Phase Six Children develop their skill and ability to read words automatically in reading and spelling. They will apply phonic knowledge to recognise and spell an increasing number of complex words. Children will be able to read an increasing number of high frequency and common exception words independently and automatically. At this stage we move onto other areas including suffixes, syllables and homophones. We use No Nonsense Spelling programme to support the teaching of these.

Ideas for Phonics Activities Sound Buttons: fish – f – i – sh lunch – l – u –n - ch

Your turn… Can you add the sound buttons to the following words… chip church scream paintbrush

Ideas for Phonics Activities Phonics Play: www.phonicsplay.co.uk www.spellingplay.co.uk www.sentenceplay.co.uk Let’s have a go at the Obb and Bob game!

Thank you for coming! Please take time to explore the resources and to ask any questions.