1. Phonics Training for Parents
November 2017

2. BINGO!

3. What is Phonics? Letter sounds – 44 of them! Government initiative
Good phonics = good reading, writing and spelling.
This is the term used for letter sounds rather than the alphabetical name.
An initiative has been set up by the government to raise children’s phonological understanding.
A good understanding of phonics enables children to blend sounds together for reading and then breaking them down for spelling.

4. Synthetic Phonics We use an approach called Synthetic Phonics.
Phonics for reading
Phonics for writing
Karen
e.g. children are taught to break a 3 letter word down and pronounce each phoneme (sound) for each letter in turn, i.e. ‘cat’ would be broken down into
C-a-t.
Synthetic phonics for writing is the reverse of the sequence
Children are taught to say a word they wish to write, segment it into its phonemes and say them in turn, e.g. d-o-g. the children would write a grapheme (letter) for each of the phonemes heard and then produce the written word ‘dog’.

5. The Phonic Alphabet The English language has 44 phonemes (sounds)
Once the children know these 44 phonemes, they are introduced to other spelling patterns for that phoneme.
Children are taught to produce the sounds as succinctly as possible, e.g. no ‘uh’!
Duncan
British spoken English is generally reckoned to use 44 sounds or ‘phonemes’. Technically a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can make a difference to a meaning of a word. 20 of these are vowel sounds and 24 are consonant sounds.

6. 44 Sounds

7. Enunciation
Teaching phonics requires specific enunciation` for the 44 phonemes
Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely.
Video
Lisa

8. Blending Children sound out the word: C-a-t
And then they blend the sounds to make the word: Cat

9. Segmenting Children break up the word into sounds – to read or spell:
Cat = C- a - t

10. Sound Buttons Children put sound ‘buttons’ under the word
A button should correspond to the phoneme e.g. church
Let’s have a go at sounding out some words and putting the sound buttons on.

11. Technical Terms
Phoneme – smallest unit of speech sound e.g. ‘p’ or ‘ch’
Grapheme – the letters that you write to represent the phoneme
Digraph – 2 letters that represent a phoneme e.g. ‘sh’
Trigraph – 3 letters that represent a phoneme e.g. ‘igh’
CVC or CVCC or CCVC words:
e.g. cat, camp, swim

12. Letters and Sounds
Phase 1 – listening to sounds/games/rhymes/beginning to hear sounds like d-o-g etc.
Reception:
Phase 2 – introduced to the single letter phonemes (19 of them) e.g. s-a-t-p-i-n and beginning to look at all 44 phonemes.
Phase 3 – Introduced to the more difficult remaining phonemes with 2 letters – ‘ee’ ‘ow’ etc
Phase 4 – practising blending to make cvc, cvcc and ccvc words. Learning to spell tricky words –
e.g. have, like, some.
Duncan
New Letters and Sounds document is split into 6 phases.

13. Letters and Sounds Year 1 Finish Phase 4 and revise
Phase 5 – children begin to learn the alternative spellings for some of the 44 phonemes – e.g. that the ‘oa’ sound in ‘boat’ can also be spelt ‘ow’ as in ‘low’. They also learn about split digraph using ‘e’ – e.g. note, name, scene, time, June
Introduced to more tricky words – people, friend and 1 new sound ‘zh’ as in
‘treasure’.
Duncan
New Letters and Sounds document is split into 6 phases.

14. Letters and Sounds Year 2 Some revision of Phase 5
Phase 6 – children should be fluently decoding and sounding out words. They are introduced to more tricky words and spelling patterns for sounds – e.g. ‘c’ making the ‘s’ sound, ‘a’ making the ‘o’ sound after ‘w’ – ‘was’ etc
They learn about prefixes and suffixes
Contractions
Past tense words and irregular verbs
Duncan
New Letters and Sounds document is split into 6 phases.

15. Jolly Phonics Each sound is supported by a story and action. Karen
One of our support materials we use in school is called Jolly Phonics.
We will share with you some of the actions to support the sounds.

16. How to help at home Play bingo Sound buttons
Model sounding out when reading and writing
Make cards of words with sounds and display – could use post-it notes
Fake words – sort
Use Phonics Play website
Rapid recall of phonemes using cards
Using actions – e.g. Darth Vader phonics/Kung-Fu phonics/Robot phonics
Duncan

17. Thank you for your time!
Any questions?