Phun with Phonics!

What is a phoneme? It’s a unit of sound. How many sounds in cat? c a t   

Where it gets a bit tricky… There are 42 phonemes to teach in total. Some of these phonemes are made up of more than one letter including… ai as in rain oa as in boat sh as in shop

Useful definitions Phoneme – This is the smallest unit of sound in a word. Grapheme – This is the written representation of the sound. Digraph – Two letters making one sound (sh/ai/oo). Trigraph – Three letters making one sound (igh) Split digraph – Where two letters are not adjacent (a_e, i_e) eg make, hide

Blending and Segmenting Key skill - Blending (for reading) Recognising the letter sounds in a written word. Eg c-u-p, sh-ee-p, and merging them into the correct order to pronounce the word cup and sheep. Segmenting (helps with spelling) This is hearing individual sounds in a word. “crash” has 4 phonemes c-r-a-sh In order to spell, a child must split a word into it’s phonemes and choose a letter or letter combination to represent the sounds.

What we want you to do… Be a robot!

Phases Phonics and reading skills are taught in six distinct phases. These phases are set out in the Letters and Sounds document.

Phase 1 (Nursery) Showing an awareness of rhyme and alliteration. Distinguishing between sounds in the environment and phonemes. Discriminating speech sounds in words. Beginning to orally blend and segment phonemes.

Phase 2 (Reception – Autumn Term) Using common consonants and vowels. Blending for reading and segmenting for spelling simple (consonant, vowel, consonant)CVC words. Understanding that words are constructed from phonemes (sounds) and that phonemes are represented by letters (graphemes). (up to 6 weeks)

Letter sets (phase 2) 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 Set 6 l, ll, ss

The first sounds… We teach the sounds not the letter names. The first set of sounds we teach are: s p a i t n Have a go at practising these sounds!

Making words Once children know these sounds we can start making words. sat pin nip sit pit pat pip sip

Phase 3 Begin when ready in Autumn term Knowing one grapheme for each of the phonemes! Reading and spelling a wide range of CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant words). (12 weeks)

Phase 3 Letter progression Set 7 j, v, w, x Set 8 y, z, zz, qu Consonant digraphs ch, sh, th, ng Graphemes: ear, air, ure, er, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo

Phase 4 Reception Summer/Year 1 Autumn This is a consolidation unit. There are no new graphemes to learn. Reading and spelling of tricky words continues. Segmenting adjacent consonants in words and applying this in spelling. Blending adjacent consonants in words and applying this skills when reading unfamiliar words. (4 to 6 weeks)

Phase 5 Throughout Year 1 Reading phonetically decodable two- syllable and three-syllable words. Using alternative ways of pronouncing and spelling the graphemes corresponding to the long vowel phonemes. Spelling complex words using phonetically plausible attempts.

Phase 6 Year 2 Recognising common irregularities and becoming more secure with less common grapheme – phoneme correspondences. Applying phonic skills and knowledge to recognise and spell an increasing number of complex words.

Phase 6 Introducing and teaching the past tense. Investigating and learning how to add suffixes. Teaching spelling long words. Finding and learning the difficult bits in words.

Tricky words In addition to this, each week the children learn ‘Tricky Words’ (those that are not spelt phonetically) and key sight vocabulary.

Nonsense Words Nonsense words are used to help Children decode words. By having Nonsense words you are soon able to find out why a child is having difficulties.

Interventions Children’s phonic progress is tracked in school. Children who have been identified as having gaps in their knowledge may need extra support. Children who need extra help will work in small groups and experience lots of reinforcement in a multisensory way.

How do we teach it? Whole school scheme based on ‘Letters and Sounds’ document to include actions, pictures, stories and sounds.

Useful websites www.phonicsplay.com (our school subscribes to this (username WHYTELEAFE and password WHYTELEAFE) www.letters-and-sounds.com has some good phonic games