Finding Out About Phonics

Holy Trinity CE Primary, Sunningdale

Getting children ready for readingFrom a very early age…

•Talking and Listening.•Reading with and to your child•Playing listening games•Singing songs and rhymes•Simple movement games

All these things will help to build up connections in the brain, an enjoyment of language and the confidence to try things out.

Two main skills:Phonics – decoding by blending the sounds in words to

read themLanguage comprehension – understand what the

word means within the context it appears

Language development and phonics working together supports reading development.

Being a successful reader

• 26 letters of alphabet• These letters and combinations of these letters make 44 sounds• Speech sounds- phonemes- the smallest units of sound in words• Letters or groups of letters- graphemes

• Phonemes can be represented by graphemes of one or more letters: t sh igh

Phonemes and graphemes

Phase 1(7 Aspects)

• show growing awareness and appreciation of rhyme, rhythm and alliteration• distinguish between different sounds in the environment and phonemes• explore and experiment with sounds and words, discriminating speech sounds in words• beginning to orally blend and segment phonemes

Phas

e 1

conti

nued

Aw

aren

ess

of rh

yme

and

allit

erati

on; d

istin

guis

h be

twee

n di

ffere

nt e

nviro

nmen

tal s

ound

s an

d ph

onem

es;

ex

plor

e an

d ex

perim

ent

with

sou

nds

and

wor

ds

• know that words are constructed from phonemes and phonemes are represented by graphemes• know small selection of common consonants and vowels, can blend for reading and segment for

spelling vc and cvc words e.g. pot, top, sat tap

Phase 2

• know one grapheme for each of 44 phonemes• know the letter names• hear and say sounds in order in which they occur in a word• read and spell a wide range of CVC words using all letters and less frequent consonant

digraphs, double letters and some long vowel phonemes e.g. sheep, goat.• read two-syllable words and captions

Phase 3

Phase 4

• can use various ways of pronouncing and spelling the graphemes corresponding to long vowel phonemes e.g. ay, ai, a-e play, pain

• can read phonically decodable two and three syllable words• can spell complex words using phonically plausible attempts

Phase 6

• apply phonics skills and knowledge to recognise and spell an increasing number of complex words

• are secure with less common grapheme/phoneme correspondence and recognise phonic irregularities

Preliminary work on general sounds and fun phonics

Children firmly in Phase 3 by end YR

Children firmly in Phase 5

by end of Y1

Colour codes

Beginning Y2 continuing into Y3

Phase 5

• can blend adjacent consonants in words and apply this when reading unfamiliar texts

• can segment adjacent consonants e.g. spoon, cried, nest • can read some polysyllabic words

Blending

• Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for examplec-a-t

and synthesising or blending them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cat’

Not cuh-a-tuh

Segmenting• ‘Chopping Up’ the word to s p e ll it out

• The opposite of blending

Some very simple prompts to help the child to check if he is using these sources of information :

Does that make sense?

Does that sound right?

Does that look right?

Words that do not decode phoneticallye.g. was, the, here

Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become easier to decode once a broader range of phonemes have been learned

e.g. outSome words need to be learned by sight e.g. one

These and high frequency words are the words we will check in the children’s little purple word books. They will receive a new list once they can read all the words without having to sound the word out.

Tricky words

• designed to give teachers and parents information on how the child is progressing in phonics

• two sections in this 40-word check and it will assess phonics skills and knowledge learned through Reception and Year 1. Takes 5-10 minutes per child

• It is a school-based check to make sure that the child receives any additional support promptly- practice time is given, it is not stressful for children.

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (June 2016)

Supporting developing readers- once children are secure with early reading skills:• Check for fluency and use of punctuation;• Ask children to predict what unfamiliar words might mean- read the

whole sentence to put the word in context;• Talk about text layout especially in non- fiction texts;• Record difficult words to practice again;• Support children with inference and

deduction e.g. Why do you think that? How do you know?

• Ask children to summarise main points ;• Begin to ask more questions on text linked to

character, setting etc• Moving on from ...Learning to read to reading to learn.

Reading for Pleasure

• Remember variety of reading: comics, picture books, magazines linked to interests, computer research/activities, audio CDs as talking books;• Library resources and story sessions;• Books as presents;• Oral story-telling;• Old favourites- are familiar, can be acted out, re-told, illustrated etc.

Any questions?