Phonics, Reading and Writing 29th September 2017

What is ‘phonics’? A method to teach children how to read and write. It’s all about sounds. There are 44 sounds in the English language, which we put together to form words. Children are taught the sounds, letters and how to use the letter sounds for reading and spelling.

Technical Blending – Putting the sounds together to read a word Segmenting - is breaking up a word into its sounds. Phoneme – The smallest units of sound that are found within a word Grapheme – The spelling of the sound Digraph – 2 letters that make one sound e.g. ch Trigraph – 3 letters that make one sound e.g. igh Tricky word – cannot easily be phonetically decoded Blend – 2 letters that make their own sounds that we often see together e.g. st

Phase 2 Letters and sounds S, a, t, p I, n, m and d G, o, c, k Ck, e, u, r H, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss Tricky words To, the, no ,go, into, I

Phase 3 Letters and sounds J, v, w, x Y, z, qu Ch, sh, th, ng Ai ,ee, igh, oa, oo Ar, or, ur, ow, oi Ear, air, ure, er Tricky words He, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my and her

Phase 4 Blends St, nd, mp, nt, nk, ft,sk, lt, lp, lf, lk, pt, xt, tr, dr, gr, cr, br, fr, bl, fl, gl, pl, cl, sl, sp, tw, pr, sc, sk, sn Clusters Nch, scr, shr, thr, str Tricky words Said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out and what

dog car shop sheep fox pot mix flight night clear Have a go! Can you read the following words using their sounds? dog car shop sheep fox pot mix flight night clear

Dots and dashes . . . . . _

Have a go! Add the dots and dashes for the following words Dash fox car sheep

What can you do to help? Use the letter sounds, not the letter names. Try to avoid the ‘uh’ factor. Encourage your child to recognise letters in their environment; street names, signs, packets, brand labels. Turn finding letters into a competition e.g. Who can spot the most m’s on a walk to the shops? Play phonics games on websites such as reading eggs, twinkl phonics app.

Reading As phonics teaching progresses books with words will start. Children will move through the bug club reading scheme. When they get to set 8 they will have one book from the bugclub reading scheme and one from the oxford tree reading scheme (these books are not phonetically decodable)

What can you do to help? Make sure that your child sees you reading. Children like to copy what their parents do, if they see you reading then they are more likely to want to read too. Read with your child every day and sign their home school diary (doesn’t need to be the whole book) Make up your own stories together. Remember bed time stories are an important time together. Visit the library so that your child regularly gets to see new books. Remember not all reading is done from a book.

Writing Writing always follows reading. The more they read the better their writing will be. We start by writing CVC words and labels. Move to short captions e.g. sit on a pin. Then on to sentences using their phonics knowledge.

What can you do to help? Encourage and praise all mark making Ask questions like: Which sound does it begin with? Support your children in writing in lower case not CAPITAL LETTERS as this will help them identify the sounds. Help children to form their letters correctly. One common mistake for children is to draw an O in a clockwise direction. Helping them to form it in an anticlockwise direction will enable the to form the following letters more easily – c,d,q,a,g,s,f – that’s nearly a third of the alphabet! Model writing with your child so that they can see its purpose; shopping lists, thank you cards, to do lists etc. Playing games such as ‘I Spy’ to get your child thinking about the sounds that are in a word. Take the pencil out of writing – mud writing, shaving foam writing, water writing.

Where we are heading Reading Children read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.

Where we are heading Writing Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

Example of expected Reception writing at the end of the year

Any questions