1. Teaching phonics at st james’ infant school
Information Meeting for Parents
Tuesday 15th January 2019

2. WHAT IS PHONICS?
Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word and the letter or letters that represent the phonemes. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words

3. How do we teach it? Daily whole class session Literacy Carousel
Supporting children to apply their learning during focus group work and 1-1 reading.

4. Saying the letter sounds correctly
“sss” not “suh”
“fff” not “fuh”

5. Making a start with phonics
Phase 1
Focus on listening skills
Listening to sounds in the environment
Nursery, rhymes, songs and games.
This paves the way for systematic learning of phonics and usually starts in nursery or pre-school, but will be revisited when the
children enter Reception.
Children are taught to listen attentively to sounds in the environment, eg going on listening walks around the school to identify the different sounds they can hear. Teachers use a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and lots of games to encourage children to listen carefully.

6. Learning to “sound talk”
c-a-t - cat
d-o-g - dog

7. Starting to learn letter sounds
Phase 2
Most single letter sounds
Sounds made by more than one letter, eg “ll” “ss”
Children in Reception move quickly onto this phase during which they will continue practising what they have learnt in Phase 1,
including “sound talking”. They will be taught the sounds for a
number of letters and that some sounds can be represented by more than one letter, eg “ll” as in “bell”, “ck” as in “duck”, “ff” as in “puff” and “ss” as in “hiss”.

8. Sound buttons
To teach the children to break words into sounds we use “sound buttons”.
Demonstrate how to write sounds buttons on board

9. We teach Jolly Phonics actions to go with the letter sounds.
Demonstrate some of the JP actions.

10. Tricky words
Alongside learning the sounds made by letters children will learn to read “tricky” words. These are words which need to be learnt by sight. Tricky words for this phase are the, to, I, no, go.

11. Writing in lower case
Lower case letters are taught initially and it is useful if you can use these at home.  

12. phase three
Phase 3
Sounds made by two or three letters, eg “sh”, “oa” as in boat “igh” as in high
blending and segmenting a wider range of words with three sounds, eg “ship”, “feet”.
Tricky words, eg he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are. They learn the letter names and how to form letters correctly

13. Making letters in playdough, sand, etc
MAKING PHONICS FUN
Games
Songs
Making letters in playdough, sand, etc
Demonstrate some games, eg on Phonics play

14. Moving on into year 1

15. Phase 4 Focuses on blending. CVCC words, eg hand, bend, lump
CCVC words, eg spin, stop, trip.
More tricky words: said, so, do, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what. .

16. Phase 5
Alternative pronunciations for spelling patterns, eg “ow” in cow and low “ea” in bread and eat.
Alternative spellings for the same sounds, eg the long “o” sound can be made by “ow”, “oa” or “o-e”
Resilience to apply trial and error – what sound right? What makes sense?

17. Strategies for reading:

18. Year 1 phonics screening
It is a statutory requirement that all Year 1 children are tested. This test consists of reading 40 words - 20 real words and 20 made up words all of which can be decoded using phonics.

19. Moving on into year 2

20. the past tense Adding suffixes, eg “er”, “est” “ful”
Phase 6
the past tense
Adding suffixes, eg “er”, “est” “ful”

21. Word types
Noun
Verb
Adjectives
Adverbs

22. Sentence types
Questions ?
Statements .
Commands .
Exclamations !

23. Spelling Patterns
If I can spell past,
then I can spell last and fast.

24. For learning tricky words
Mnemonics
For learning tricky words
People – people eat omelettes, people like eggs.
Because – big elephants can always understand small elephants
When – W hen W

25. Suffixes adding an ending to a word that changes it’s meaning ful ly
ness
ment
less

26. Vowel suffixes
ing
ed past tense
est er Y en

27. Prefixes Un – a reversal e.g. unplug Dis- means not e.g. disagree
Mis- means wrong e.g. misunderstood

28. Plurals Adding s Pencils Tables Monkeys Adding es Foxes Churches
bushes
But
Half – halves
Knife - knives
And the exceptions !
Sheep

29. Contractions Do not – don’t Cannot – can’t Should have – should’ve
I have – I’ve
He will – he’ll
We are- we’re
It is – it’s
I am – I’m

30. Silent letters W Write Wrote Wrong wrap K knock know knee knew g gnat
gnome
gnaw

31. Common exception words

32. HOW YOU CAN HELP AT HOME Sing songs and nursery rhymes
Play tongue twisters
Play games, eg I spy
Play with words, eg how many words can you think of with “oy” and make silly sentences with them.
When reading, ask your child to pick out words with particular sounds in
Help the children to apply decoding strategies as opposed to giving them the word straight away.
Help your child to identify and say tricky words (words that cant be sounded out)