Thursday 27 th November 2014

 know what synthetic phonics is and why it is being taught to your child.  know the way your child is being taught phonics at school.  have some new ideas about how you can help your child with phonics at home.

 Phoneme- the smallest unit of sound e.g. ‘a.’  Grapheme- a written letter that makes a sound (sound symbol).  Digraph- two letters that make one sound e.g. ‘sh.’  Trigraph- three letters that make one sound e.g. ‘ear’, ‘air’, ‘igh. ’

Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup.’

Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound to form the word ‘him.’

A word is ‘tricky’ if it has a letter-sound correspondence that is very unusual. your people Mr Mrs some should because said one are or has not yet been taught e.g. like

A ‘high-frequency’ word is one that can be sounded out but occurs so frequently in books that in order to become fluent readers the children need to recognise them on sight. on at and will had in as that

Nursery Phase 1 Listening to noises:  Environmental  Instrumental  Speech sound discrimination  Making sounds with their own voices

Nursery Phase 1  Teachers plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys and those in spoken language.  Teachers teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs.  They read good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words they know (their vocabulary) and helps them talk confidently about books.

Children are not taught alphabetically but in an order that will enable them to read successfully immediately. s a tpin  How many words can you make with the 6 graphemes above?

 Your child will be taught how to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) correctly to make blending easier.  Sounds should be sustained where possible (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be reduced as far as possible (e.g. try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’). Reception follow the Jolly Phonics program to teach actions and reinforce the sounds.

Reception The purpose of this phase is to:  teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat.  practise blending and segmenting a wider set of words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light.  learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly using the school handwriting scheme.  read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them.  read and write words in phrases and sentences.

Reception  Teach children to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants (clump, tent) and some simple compound words (windmill).  Consolidates knowledge of letters and sounds.  Introduces adjacent consonants.  No new phonemes are taught.  Typical duration: 4-6 weeks.

Year 1  Children are taught to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing and spelling the graphemes already taught. cake train play

 a a-e ai ay ey eigh  e e-e ea ee y  i i-e ie igh y  o o-e oa oe ow  u u-e ue oo ew  oo u  ow ou ough  oi oy  ar a  or aw ore a ough  air are ear  eer ear

Spelling and the new curriculum Children are taught to develop their skill and automaticity in reading, creating ever-increasing capacity to read for meaning. Children are taught spelling patterns and rules such as word endings (s, es, ly), prefixes and using apostrophes correctly.

Daily 25 minute whole class phonics input in which children:  Recap the phonemes (or sounds) that they have been learning.  Learn a new phoneme or tricky word.  Learn to write the grapheme (also focussing on letter formation).  Apply what they have learnt to a game, new word or a sentence.

 Along with the daily phonics sessions children will be heard read by their class teacher in a guided group each week.  Phonics is reinforced throughout the curriculum.  Children will expected to use and apply their phonics every time they are reading and writing and the teachers will model how to do this whenever they write.

Useful websites:  owl/expert-help/phonics-made-easy owl/expert-help/phonics-made-easy This is where you can listen to the sounds, register for free e-books and find many more reading resources.  Fantastic for interactive games and we use it at school.

BBC Bitesize Woodlands Games And don’t forget to use your child’s logon for the Bug Club which we subscribe to as a whole school phonics reading scheme!

 Greater emphasis is placed on cross curricular reading.  Topic related reading – find out what your child is studying at school and go to the library or use the internet to research.  Emphasis on whole reading – deriving meaning from texts (beyond decoding to higher order skills) and on reading for pleasure.  Year 2 Spelling and Grammar Test (2016) – formal work on spelling, grammar and punctuation is taught during reading and writing.

What is reading comprehension and how can you help fluent readers?  Predicting  Clarifying  Questioning  Summarising Activity Time!!

Predicting involves previewing the text to anticipate what may happen next. This may begin with looking at pictures and thinking what the book might be about or telling their own story using the pictures. Readers can use the information from the text and their prior knowledge to make logical predictions before and during reading.

Although children can be taught to identify difficult words and work through them, it is much more difficult for some to recognise unclear sentences, passages, chapters or ideas. Clarifying helps children to monitor their own understanding and identify any problems in comprehending portions of the text.

Good readers ask questions throughout the reading process but formulating questions is a difficult and complex task. Ask your child to think up some questions for you to answer. These could start with questions about the main characters or ideas or some inference questions – can they catch you out?

To summarise effectively children must recall and arrange in order only the important events in a text. Summarising helps readers to construct an overall understanding of a text, story, chapter or paragraph.

 Talk about the book: before reading, whilst reading, and after reading.  Please comment on how your child has read in their reading record book – your support really helps us!  Word games e.g. Scrabble, Boggle, Hangman.  BBC Bitesize.  Audio CDs.

 For early readers, daily reading practice at home is vital.  Reading from child’s reading scheme book is important for progress.  All children start at different levels and will learn at different rates but your interest in their progress is pivotal to their motivation.

We encourage children to read a range of different library books at home for variation including poems, non-fiction and comics. It is also beneficial to read a range of books to your children to immerse them in different language and vocabulary. It is of great benefit to read to your child from a book that is at a higher level than their own reading ability. The breadth of their reading helps them develop their speaking skills which also plays a key role in their ability to progress well with their writing.

Does anybody have any questions?