Letters and Sounds Phonics information for parents

What is Letters and Sounds ? Letters and Sounds – government document which most English schools teach. Phase 1 is usually taught in Pre-Schools/ Nursery and then recapped in Reception Phase 2 is recommended to start in Reception. Children will continue learning new sounds throughout Y1 and Y2 and the skills learned are continued throughout school Multi Sensory Approach -Jolly phonics actions Importance of pronouncing sounds correctly

Teaching a sound Each day a new letter SOUND is introduced (not the capital letter name) Usually 3-4 new sounds are taught a week and these are then revised on a Friday Each sound has an action and is introduced using a story/song. Structure of a typical Lesson Revise and revisit sounds learned Introduce a new sound Read and write words containing that sound Practising skills

After teaching the single sounds (phonemes) we then teach sounds which are made up of 2 letters (diagraphs e.g. ai, ee, oo, oa) There are also some trigraphs, such as igh, air, ure The pace becomes a little slower.

Blending and Segmenting 2 key skills to help us read and write

Blending Blending for reading 1. Children need to learn to recognise each sound i.e. the sounds in cat are c/a/t 2. Next children need to be able to put these sounds together (blend).

Segmenting To help children to write words themselves they need to hear the sounds in each word. Usually children are able to hear the first sound, then with practise they can hear the last sound and middle vowels come last.

Guided/Individual reading Blending and Segmenting skillls are then put into practise in reading and writing activities. During reading we have a strong focus on COMPREHENSION - What are the character’s feeling? - what has just happened? - predicting what might happen next? (using pictures, word clues, the context, their own experiences to UNDERSTAND what they are reading)

Tricky words These are TRICKY! Go against all rules that children are learning! No other way to read/write them other than memorising PRACTISE AGAIN AND AGAIN IN DIFFERENT WAYS

Home Learning Children need to practise these skills during their home learning tasks. Don’t worry about misspelt words! Please don’t just tell your child the letters in every word. Phonetically plausible words are accepted e.g Elephant – elifant this may start off as eft or elft