1. New Parents’ Meeting September 2017
Welcome to
New Parents’ Meeting
September 2017

2. What is the Early Years Foundation Stage?
The Early Years Foundation Stage (E.Y.F.S.) is the stage of education for children from birth to the end of the Reception year.
It is based on the recognition that children learn best through play and active learning.
Their early years experience should be happy, active, exciting, fun and secure; and support their development, care and learning needs.

3. Children need to develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:
Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development
Children need to develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:
1. Communication and language
2. Physical development
3. Personal, social and emotional development.
These prime areas provide the foundations for children to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:
1. Literacy
2. Mathematics
3. Understanding the world
4. Expressive arts and design.

4. Reading Books
Children will start off by bringing home fish sounds and picture books. They will then progress to Key Words.
Once they are able to blend and segment, they will be given a book with text. Please ensure books, fish sounds and key words are in your child’s book bag every day.
Your child will be given a yellow reading record with their book. Please ensure this is signed every time you work with your child at home.
Children will be heard by an adult in school at least once a week. Books will usually be changed on Mondays.
Please do not put water bottles in with your child’s reading book.

5. General
Please ensure that your child’s name is in all items of clothing, including shoes!
Water in school no juice.
Names on snacks.
Progressing to saying goodbye at the decking.
Your child will be taking part in lots of interesting and sometimes messy experiences, so may come home dirty! It is all part of the fun!

6. What is phonics and how can I help my child at home?

7. + Phonics is all about using … knowledge of the alphabet
skills for reading and spelling +
Learning phonics will help your child to become a good reader and writer.

8. Phonic terms Phoneme (sound) Grapheme (letter formation)
Blending (putting sounds together to make word)
Segmenting (breaking word into sounds)
Digraph (2 letter sounds /oo/ /ch/)
Trigraph (3 letter sounds /igh/)
CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant)
Sound button
Key words /High Frequency words/ Tricky words/ Sight words

9. Phonics Words Phoneme (sound) sounds that can be heard in words
Your children will learn to use the term:
Phoneme (sound)
sounds that can be heard in words
e.g. c-a-t
Sounds should be articulated clearly and precisely.
We call these pure sounds.

10. Phonics Words Blending
Your children will learn to use the term:
Blending
Children need to be able to hear the separate sounds in a word and then blend them together to say the whole word .

11. Blending
/b/ /e/ /d/ = bed
/t/ /i/ /n/ = tin
/m/ /u/ /g/ = mug

12. How can I help at home? Oral blending: the robot game
Children need to practise hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a word.
For example, you say ‘b-u-s’, and your child says ‘bus’.
Shall we go to the ‘sh-o-p’? It’s time to brush your ‘t-ee-th’.

13. Phonics Words Segmenting
Your children will learn to use the term:
Segmenting
Children need to be able to hear a whole word and say every sound that they hear .

14. Segmenting
bed = /b/ /e/ /d/
tin= /t/ /i/ /n/
mug= /m/ /u/ /g/

15. Daily Phonics Every day the children have 20 minute
sessions of phonics.
We use the Letters and Sounds planning document to support the teaching of phonics, alongside Jolly Phonics actions.
There are 6 phonics phases which the children work through. Phase 1 should have been covered in pre-schools and nurseries. In Reception we start with phase 2.
Daily Phonics
Phoneme frames, sound buttons, full circle, countdown, flashcards, buried treasure

16. Phase 2: Learning phonemes to read and write simple words
Children will learn their first 19 phonemes:
Set 1: s a t p Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k Set 4: ck (as in duck) e u r
Set 5: h b l f ff (as in puff) ll (as in hill) ss (as in hiss)
They will use these phonemes to read and spell simple “consonant-vowel-consonant” (CVC) words:
sat, tap, dig, duck, rug, puff, hill, hiss
All these words contain 3 phonemes.

17. High Frequency Words Tricky Words Key Words
There are many words that cannot be blended or segmented because they are irregular.
the was said you some
We will send home key words in sets of 5 for children to learn at home and at school. There are 45 Key words to learn in Reception.

18. At home
Children will bring home ‘fish’ sounds with the phonemes they are currently working on.
Practise the phonemes together – robot talk, I-spy games using sounds (something that begins with ……. ends with ……… middle sound is…………)
Use sound cards to make words and change one at a time to make different words at home and play phonics games
Read everyday with your child
Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when writing