1. Phonics at Katherine Semar Infant School
Thursday 16th October 2014

2. Seven Areas of Learning in the Foundation Stage
Personal, Social
and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Physical Development
Mathematics
Literacy
Expressive Arts and Design
Understanding the World

3. Linking sounds and letters
Six phase teaching programme
Phase 1 - Nursery/Reception
Phase 2 - Reception
Phase 3 - Reception
Phase 4 - Reception
Phase 5 - Year 1
Phase 6 - Year 2
Children progress through these stages at their own pace – some take longer to get there! This is a continual process from Foundation through Key Stage 1 and beyond.

4. Phase 1: Exploring sounds
instrumental
environmental
rhyme and alliteration

5. Phase 1: Developing early reading
and writing skills
Before your child is ready to read – they must have lots of talking opportunities.
If they can’t say it, they won’t be able to write it - poor language skills will make reading and writing very difficult.

6. Phase 1: Activities to support
this phase
Time for talk!
In the car, in the bath, reading stories, at the dinner table - encourage your child to listen to others, share their opinion, describe what they can see.
It is important that correct language is modelled and correct pronunciation of words – e.g, the not du or v.
Time for rhyme
Read and encourage your child to join in with nursery rhymes and poems.
Play rhyming games – make up nonsense rhymes using your child’s name such as ‘Here comes Hattie, Pattie, Mattie’.

7. Phase 2: Exploring letters and
corresponding sounds
19 phonemes are taught
Blend phonemes and segment words
Read ‘vc’ and ‘cvc’ words
Tricky words

8. Phase 2: Terminology Phoneme - sounds of letter
Grapheme - ‘shape’ of a letter
Blend - putting sounds together to make
a word for reading
eg. c-a-t cat
Segment - Pulling a word apart into it’s sounds
for writing
eg. cat c-a-t
VC and CVC -VC is vowel consonant words
- CVC is consonant vowel consonant
words

9. Phase 3: Exploring letters
25 more phonemes are taught
(most are letter combinations i.e two letters which make one sound –
sh, th, ng)
Read and spell ‘cvc’ words
Letter names – alphabet song
Spell tricky words

10. Phase 4: Consolidating knowledge
42 graphemes are known
Consolidate reading and spelling
of tricky words
Consonant clusters

11. Phase 2: How is it taught? Structure...
Twice a day – letter sounds, blending, segmenting,
tricky words, applying skills to real reading
and writing contexts.
Action and sound...
Based on multi-sensory approach
Pronunciation...
no ‘uh’ at the end - soft voice (p, s, m)

12. Pronunciation
Videos for all phonemes are on the School Website

13. Phase 2: Letter progression
s – a – t – p
i – n - m – d
g – o – c – k
ck – e – u – r
h – b – f - l
A good phonic understanding is one of the key foundations of being a good reader and writer.

14. Phase 2: Blending and segmenting
s a t
a t
t a p

15. Phase 3: Blending and segmenting using phase 3 letter combinations
s h i p
f e e t
c h u r c h

16. Phase 2: Tricky words the was said all are
Words that you ‘just have to know’
through on-sight recognition
Spot the words in books and
in the environment.
Wiggle fingers when you
hear the word.
Matching pairs game
Daily practise
the
was
said
all
are

17. Helping your child at home............with reading
Practise oral blending - use sound talk– its time for
b – e – d, let’s put your shoes on your f – ee — t, shall we
have some bread and j – a – m?
Sing nursery rhymes and play with rhyme – cat, fat, bat
I spy...emphasising the initial sound
Make collections of things beginning with the same letter
Stretch out words slowly, helping your child to identify
each sound in turn.
Practise recognising tricky words.
Discuss the pictures and language used in books to help
develop your child’s comprehension skills.

18. Helping your child at home............with writing
Stretch out the word slowly, helping your child to identify each sound in turn.
Use magnetic letters to make words. Sound them out to check.
Practise letter formation – pencil and paper, white boards, in flour, foam, glitter!!
Writing shopping lists
Messages for people (post-its)
Encourage your child to write the sounds they can hear in words. Accuracy in this is more important than accuracy of the word itself at this stage.
I.e. They may write ‘it’ for ‘eat’ or ‘is’ for ‘ice’.

19. talk to youir child about phonics,
and finally...
talk to youir child about phonics,
model speaking and listening and be enthusiastic
about their early attempts to read and
write at every opportunity!