Phonics Workshop For Parents We, like most other schools across the country follow the ‘Letters and sounds’ program for teaching phonics.

Glossary of Terms Phoneme – the sound a letter or set of letters makes Grapheme – what the phoneme looks like written down Digraph – 2 letters which make 1 phoneme e.g. ch, ai, oe Trigraph – 3 letters which make 1 phoneme e.g. igh, ure, ear, air Split digraph – a digraph split between a letter e.g a-e (cake) i-e (like) o-e (hope) u-e (cube) CVC word – vowel/consonant/vowel e.g. cat/tin/bed CVCC (bump) or CCVC (swim) words Blending – hearing the sounds coming together to say the whole word Segmenting – separating the sounds for spelling Tricky Words – those which cannot be blended or segmented phonetically – irregular words e.g. said, was, could

Phase 1 – Nursery Phase 2 – Reception Phase 3 – Reception Phase 4 – Reception/Year 1 Phase 5 – Year 1 Phase 6 – Year 2 We teach the children in ability sets across Key Stage 1

Phase Two (5 weeks) By the end of phase two children should be able to read some vc and cvc words. Children will also learn to read the “Tricky Words” ‘the, to, go, I and no.’ Five sets of letters are introduced – one set per week. 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 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

Phase Three (12 weeks) The children are taught another 25 phonemes & graphemes and will be taught to read 12 more ‘Tricky Words’ by sight – he, she, me, be, we, was, you, they, all, are, my, her. Children continue to blend and segment CVC words for reading and spelling. Children will then use this knowledge to blend and segment two syllable words (e.g. yellow, picture, ladder) 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 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 Four (4 – 6) weeks By Phase 4 children are able to represent each of 42 phonemes by a grapheme. Children will be able to blend and segment CVC words for reading and spelling. They will also be taught to read another 14 ‘Tricky Words’ by sight – said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what. Phase 4 is consolidation of children’s knowledge. Children are encouraged to practice blending for reading and segmenting for spelling of adjacent consonants (CCVC/CVCC words) Examples…. frog, snap, clap, drop, trap, pram hand, damp, wink, milk, pond

Phase Five Throughout year one Children will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes. They will learn alternative pronunciations of graphemes including split digraphs. They will also learn to read on sight 9 more ‘Tricky Words’ – looked , called, asked, could, oh, their, Mr, people, Mrs Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these graphemes and graphemes they already know. They will begin to learn to choose the appropriate grapheme when spelling. The children will be automatically decoding a large number of words for reading by this point.

igh – ie – i-e - y (night/pie/like/spy) ee – ea - ie (see/sea/chief) ou – ow (cloud/crown) ai – ay – a-e (rain/day/make) oo – ue – u-e - ew (food/blue/cube/chew) oe - ow – o-e – oa (toe/snow/rode/road) or – au – aw (fork/launch/paw) oo – ou (cook/would) oi – oy (boil/toy)

The Phonics Check In June all Year One children will be expected to undertake a phonics check. The aim is to check that a child is making progress in phonics. If a child has not reached the expected standard we will ensure that additional support is given to help your child progress in year 2. The test does include non-words (“alien words”), the reason for this is to check that they can use their phonic knowledge to tackle unfamiliar words. Pupils who have achieved the expected standard at the end of Year 1 will have experience of decoding all of the types of words that appear in the Year 1 phonics screening check. They will know the grapheme-phoneme correspondences and be able to blend phonemes in words with the orthographical structures that have been included in the screening check. However, pupils at the minimum expected standard will not necessarily score full marks.   In particular this means that in the screening check, a pupil working at the minimum expected standard should be able to decode: all items with simple structures containing single letters and consonant digraphs most items containing frequent and consistent vowel digraphs frequent means that the vowel digraph appears often in words read by pupils in year 1 consistent means the digraph has a single or predominant phoneme correspondence all items containing a single 2-consonant string with other single letters (i.e., CCVC or CVCC) most items containing two 2-consonant strings and a vowel (i.e., CCVCC) some items containing less frequent and less consistent vowel digraphs, including split digraphs some items containing a single 3-consonant string some items containing 2 syllables

What the Screening Check Looks Like…….

How Can You Help Your Child? Encourage your child to read everyday if possible Encourage them to sound out and blend unfamiliar words for themselves If they have read a word incorrectly, help them to break it down – e.g n-igh-t g-oa-t If you are unsure about what phase your child is on or which phonemes they have covered in class speak your class teacher There are loads of great phonics games on the internet……….

Useful websites…….. http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/ http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ http://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/phonics/play/ http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/ literacy.html#3 http://www.mrthorne.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djz82FBYiug http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/alphablocks