Phonics Parents Workshop November 2013

In school, we follow the Letters and Sounds programme In school, we follow the Letters and Sounds programme. Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills which consists of six phases.

A phonics quiz 1) What is a phoneme? 2) How many phonemes are in the word ‘strap’? 3) What is a digraph? 4) Give an example of a consonant digraph. What is a CVC word? Give an example. What is a ‘trigraph’? Give an example How many phonemes are in the word ‘twenty’? Go through the quiz quickly. (Literacy Consultants have looked at this previously). Note your responses and in particular any uncertainties you have about questions in the quiz. Discuss these with your colleagues. It is highly likely that practitioners within your LA will have similar uncertainties. Consider using a similar test at the beginning of your own training sessions to enable you to monitor levels of subject knowledge locally. While teachers need more than this – training on structuring and linking teaching sessions, for example – core subject knowledge provides a critical foundation. When this quiz has been used by a literacy consultant with teachers and TAs the average scores to date are 7/10 for literacy co-ordinators, 4/10 for teachers and 2/10 for TAs. Individual scores vary from 0 to 9. Scores have been close to the average in all groups tested, so subject knowledge is likely to be an issue in your own authority.

A phonics quiz 1) What is a phoneme? A unit of sound. 2) How many phonemes are in the word ‘strap’? 5 3) What is a digraph? Two letters which make one sound. 4) Give an example of a consonant diagraph. ch sh ll th 5) What is a CVC word? consonant-vowel-consonant 6) Give an example 7) What is a ‘trigraph’? Three letters which make one sound. 8) Give an example igh 9) How many phonemes are in the word ‘twenty’? 6 Go through the quiz quickly. (Literacy Consultants have looked at this previously). Note your responses and in particular any uncertainties you have about questions in the quiz. Discuss these with your colleagues. It is highly likely that practitioners within your LA will have similar uncertainties. Consider using a similar test at the beginning of your own training sessions to enable you to monitor levels of subject knowledge locally. While teachers need more than this – training on structuring and linking teaching sessions, for example – core subject knowledge provides a critical foundation. When this quiz has been used by a literacy consultant with teachers and TAs the average scores to date are 7/10 for literacy co-ordinators, 4/10 for teachers and 2/10 for TAs. Individual scores vary from 0 to 9. Scores have been close to the average in all groups tested, so subject knowledge is likely to be an issue in your own authority.

Phase 1 There are 7 aspects with 3 strands. A1 – Environmental A2 – Instrumental sounds A3 – Body Percussion A4 – Rhythm and rhyme A5 – Alliteration A6 – Voice sounds A7 – Oral blending and segmenting.

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, l, ll, ss

CVC words: Which of these are CVC words? p i g s h e e p s h i p c a r b o y c o w f i l l w h i p s o n g f o r d a y m i s s w h i z z h u f f This slide is designed to act as a check of understanding of which words are CVC words and which are not. Which of the above are not CVC words? Segment the phonemes. Some words contain a vowel digraph and are therefore not a CVC word.

p i g sheep s h i p c a r X b o y X c o w X f i l l w h i p CVC words: p i g sheep s h i p c a r X b o y X c o w X f i l l w h i p s o n g f o r X d a y X m i s s w h i z z huff Activity Discuss the implications for phonics training sessions in your LA.

Examples of: CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC b l a c k s t r o n g f e l t b l a n k s p o o n c r i e d n e s t ACTIVITY Consider with reference to the above slide, what could be the most common errors, practitioners may make with blending and segmenting these words. Synthetic phonics focuses on the smallest units of sound in a word. There are usually 2 or 3 phonemes within a number of consecutive (adjacent) consonants. e.g. strap contains five phonemes /s/ /t/ /r/ /a/ /p/ ‘Str’ is not a phoneme ‘Ap’ is not a phoneme Children need to be taught to blend and segment these phonemes within CCVC and CVCC words. Teachers should not be teaching ‘sl’, ‘sm’, ‘sn’ etc as units of sound which need to be learned individually – this takes far too long, is unnecessary and doesn’t improve children’s spelling and reading skills as quickly. The key here is applying the generic skill of blending to the phonemes in the word (using the taught knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences), from left to right in the order in which they are recorded in the word.

Examples of: CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC b l a c k s t r o n g c c v c c c c v c f e l t b l a n k c v c c c c v c c s p o o n c r i e d c c v c c c v c n e s t c v c c ACTIVITY Consider with reference to the above slide, what could be the most common errors, practitioners may make with blending and segmenting these words. Synthetic phonics focuses on the smallest units of sound in a word. There are usually 2 or 3 phonemes within a number of consecutive (adjacent) consonants. e.g. strap contains five phonemes /s/ /t/ /r/ /a/ /p/ ‘Str’ is not a phoneme ‘Ap’ is not a phoneme Children need to be taught to blend and segment these phonemes within CCVC and CVCC words. Teachers should not be teaching ‘sl’, ‘sm’, ‘sn’ etc as units of sound which need to be learned individually – this takes far too long, is unnecessary and doesn’t improve children’s spelling and reading skills as quickly. The key here is applying the generic skill of blending to the phonemes in the word (using the taught knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences), from left to right in the order in which they are recorded in the word.

Phase 3 Set 6: j, v, w, x Set 7: y, z, zz, qu Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

Phase 4 This phase consolidates all the children have learnt in the previous phases.

Phase 5 Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these graphemes. Developing automaticity (A child can read words with 100% accuracy, but if those words are not read rapidly enough to get a complete thought in working memory within the 10 second constraint, comprehension will be difficult). Vowel digraphs: wh, ph, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, ew, oe, au Split digraphs: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e

Phase 6 The focus is on learning spelling rules for suffixes. -s -es -ing -ed -er -est -y -en -ful -ly -ment -ness

Segmenting Breaking down words for spelling. cat c a t

Segmenting Queen qu ee n

Building words from phonemes to read. Blending Building words from phonemes to read. c a t cat

Blending Qu ee n queen

YEAR 1 PHONICS TEST Pass score 32 out of 40 Retake at the end of year 2. Read a mixture of real and pseudo words.

What does a Phonics lesson look like? Revisit/review Flashcards to practice phonemes learnt so far. Teach Teach new phoneme a_e Practice Buried treasure glake, came, make, made, stame, escake, cake, take, afraze, nade. Apply Read captions: It will amaze me if you can escape from this maze. When the Romans came to invade, they made great long roads. Can a snake have a race with a whale in a lake?

A typical phonics lesson…

Resources www.phonicsplay.co.uk – some games are free. Pocket Phonics - £1.99 at the app store. It goes through all the phases and segments and blends.

SOME ACTIVITIES… Courgettes – adding –ed sheet. Cauliflowers – Sentences board game. Leeks – Split digraph dice game. Peppers – phoneme spotting. Onions – IPads – pocket phonics