Wednesday 11th November 2014

Bolshaw Primary School

• To help you understand more about what phonics is and how we teach it at school

• Not to scare you – handouts will be a reference for you with some of the hard language involved with phonics

• To understand what is expected at each Letters and Sounds phase

• To give you practical ideas on games and activities you can be playing at home with your children

• For you to feel more confident in supporting us in teaching your child to read letters, words, sentences and texts

In school, we follow the Letters and

Sounds programme, delivered

through Jolly Phonics.

• An independent review of the teaching of early reading

• This included the role of synthetic phonics

Recommendations:• Systematic approach - synthetic phonics• Phonic work is essential for the development of writing,

especially spelling• Children must be taught how reading and writing are

related

Since the Rose Review, phonics has become a widely used method of teaching children to read and

decode words.

Sessions use a variety of different approaches to engage children and ensure their individual learning

styles have been catered for.

Phonics is about learning letter sounds NOT the letter names. Phonics is the relationship between letters

and sounds.

There are 44 sounds in the English Language that we learn to put together to make words.

Phoneme Graphemes Segmenting and blending  Digraph Trigraph Split vowel digraph

Terminology

Phonemes are 

Graphemes 

Phonemes and Graphemes

SegmentingPulling the word apart – sounding out.

catc a t

BlendingPutting the sounds together to

read the word.

c at

Phases 4 and 5

ReceptionPhases 1, 2 and 3

Year 1

Year 2Phases 6

When are the phases usually taught?

Phase 1There are 7 aspects with 3 strands:

A1 – Environmental

A2 – Instrumental sounds

A3 – Body Percussion

A4 – Rhythm and rhyme

A5 – Alliteration

A6 – Voice sounds

A7 – Oral blending and segmenting.

Is the start of systematic phonic work.

Introduces the phoneme-grapheme correspondence. To teach that words are constructed from sounds (phonemes) and that sounds are represented by letters (graphemes.)

Phase 2

s a t p i n m d g o c

k ck e u r h b f ff l ll

ss

Phase 2 Phonemes and actions

Pronouncing the phonemes correctly is very important.

eg the letter s is pronounced sssss and not suh.We all need to use the same language at home and at school.

s a t p i n

sat it pattap pan nip

Phase 3 The children continue to segment

and blend words and begin to learn digraphs and trigraphs

For exampleDigraphs - ‘rain’, ‘deep’, and ‘chop’.

Trigraph – night, chair, dear

Digraphs and Trigraphs

Can you identify the digraphsand trigraphs in these words?

beard blue

fairy nightsound

soil

Phase 3 phonemes and actions

j v w y z zz qu ch sh th ng

ai ee igh oa oo oo ar or ur ow oi

ear air ure er

TRICKY WORDSWords that are not phonically decodable.

was, the, I.

Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become decodable once children have learned the harder phonemes.

out, there.

Phase 4

This phase consolidates all the children have learnt in the previous

phases.

In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced.

The main aim of this phase is to consolidate the children's knowledge and to help them learn to read and

spell words which have adjacent consonants.

trap string milk

Phase 5Children will be taught new graphemes and

alternative pronunciations for these graphemes. e.g the children will know that ai as in rain but will

now learn ay as in play.

Split digraphs: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_ee.g. plane, home, nice

Alternative pronunciationsea in tea, head and break

Phoneme Spotter Story

How many alternative graphemes can you find that make the same phoneme?

A real treat

ee ea ey y e-e i ie

Year 1 Phonics Test

Pseudo words Children are taught to read real

words and pseudo words (nonsense words).

For example ‘hep’, ‘vel’, ‘sep’, ‘mear’ and ‘hain’.

Phase 6During this phase, children will:

Learn about long and short vowel sounds

Learn about past and present tense

Learn about rules for adding suffixes (word endings)

Develop strategies for spelling polysyllabic and compound words. (e.g wonderful, internet, snowman, playground)

Long and Short Vowel Sounds

a ei

o u

Long and Short Vowel Sounds

a ei

o uIt is important that children can distinguish between long and short vowel sounds, so that they can apply the rules when adding suffixes and prefixes in Phase 6.

Adding ‘ed’

jump

partychim

skipclimb

ed

Phase 6The children will investigate the

rules for suffixes

-s -es -ing -ed-er -est -y -en

-ful -ly -ment -ness

Phase 6The children will also begin to

investigate how prefixes change the meaning of words

unzip disagree

What does a Phonics lesson look like?

Revisit/review

Practice phonemes learnt so far.

Teach Teach new phoneme air

Practice Buried treasure air, zair, fair, hair, lair, pair, vair, sair, thair

Apply Read captions:The girl has long hair.The boy had fun at the fair.

Mnemonics A spelling strategy that the children enjoy is

making up mnemonics. For example:People – people eat orange peel like elephants

Have you used a mnemonic to remember howto spell a word? Can you think of one for the

word ‘because’?

How can you help at home?

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

How can you help at home?

www.ictgames.com

How can you help at home?

Phoneme frame

Flash cards

Magnetic letters

Any questions