Letters and Sounds

Information for Parents November 2012

Phonics at a glance

Phonics is…

Skills of segmentation and blending

Knowledge of the

alphabetic code.

Activities we do to encourage phase 1 skills…

Phase 1 of letters and sounds

• There are 7 aspects of this phase:1. Environmental sounds. 2. Instrumental sounds3. Body percussion4. Rhythm and rhyme5. Alliteration (words that begin with the same

sound)6. Voice Sounds7. Oral blending and segmenting

Sound Tray

All phase 1 activities are designed to help children:

• Listen attentively (active listening – not just responding through habit)

• Enlarge their vocabulary• Speak confidently to adults and other children• Discriminate sounds• Reproduce audibly the sounds they hear, in

order, all through the word, emphasising clear speech

• Use sound talk to break up a word (c-a-t)

Phonics Consists of:

• Identifying sounds in spoken words

• Recognising the common spellings of each phoneme.

• Blending phonemes into words for reading.

• Segmenting words into phonemes for spelling.

Some Definitions

A Phoneme

This is the smallest unit of sound in a word.

How many phonemes can you hear in

cat?

• A phoneme you hear

• A grapheme you see

Phase 2

• In order to progress in phase 2- children need to be able to:

• Distinguish between speech and other sounds• Hear sounds in words• Orally blend sounds to build words• Recognise rhyming wordsListening activities continue to be an

important part of phase 2 in order to develop these skills

Phase 2 continued

The purpose of phase 2 is to teach at least 19 letters and move children on from orally building sounds into words, to blending and segmenting with letters.They are also taught to read by sight ‘Tricky words’ that can not be read by sounding.The first 5 tricky words are:

I the to no go

Enunciation(The correct way to say a sound)

• Teaching phonics requires a technical skill in enunciation.

• Phonemes (sounds) should be articulated clearly and precisely.

The sequence in which letters are taught

• Letters are taught in small groups• Set 1: s a t p• Set 2: i n m d • Set 3: g o c k• Set 4 ck e u r • Set 5 h b f,ff l,ll ss • http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/ngfl-

flash/alphabet-eng/alphabet.htm

Activities we do in phase 2

• Looking at letter shapes as initial sounds: tell me something that begins with … I spy choose a toy – what sound does it begin with, can you show me a letter…

• Listening to sounds to blend – action game can you c,l,a,p? Robot game

• Looking at sounds to blend – sounding out words – treasure chest game

• Splitting up words in order to spell them- segmenting- what sounds can you hear in….

Other key points to phase 2

• Letters are taught as sounds – children need to know the sound first and then the letter name.

• Children will practise letter formation but are able to use tools like magnetic letters in order to use their phonics skills, even if their fine motor skills are not yet well developed.

• They will be encouraged to first read individual words and then phrases. The first words they read may be VC or CVC words. (We will give them a reading book when they know at least 20 letter sounds and the phase 2 words.)

• They will be encouraged to write words and then phrases• Writing that is not recognisable to an adult is called

emergent writing and is all part of their learning to write journey, and should be encouraged.

Phase 3

Children entering phase three will know about 19 letter sounds and be able to blend and segment simple two-letter words e.g. it, on. They may also be able to blend and segment three-letter words.

Phase 3 teaches:

• the remaining 25 phonemes, many of which consist of two letters e.g. oo, sh

• the letter names• the tricky words he, she, me, we, be,

was, my, you, her, they, all, are.• We continue to practise and develop the

blending and segmenting skills begun in phase 2.

Grapheme Key Vocabulary

• Digraph

• Trigraph

• Split diagraph

2 letters making one sound ( ai, ee, oo)

3 letters making one sound ( igh , dge )

Where the two letters are not adjacent ( a-e, e-e )

Sounds covered in Phase 3

Letter Progression: Set 6 - j, v, w, x

Set 7 - y, z, zz, qu Consonant digraphs:

ch, sh, th, ng

Graphemes: ear, air, ure, er, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo

Issues arising from phase 3

• Learning to spot digraphs when reading• confusing th and f• learning to blend more quickly and

recognise some words on sight so that reading isn’t too labour-intensive

• attempting to read and write multi-syllable words

• trying to sound out words using letter names rather than sounds

Phase 4

• This is a consolidation unit. There are no new graphemes to learn. Reading and spelling of tricky words continues.

• Segmenting adjacent consonants in words and applying this in spelling.

• Blending adjacent consonants in words and applying this skill when reading unfamiliar texts.

The children always work within the phase that is appropriate to their level

of learning.

They are assessed regularly and groupings are sorted accordingly.

Therefore the suggested model of year group and corresponding phase, does not always go hand in hand with the

year group that your child is actually in.

Useful web sites

• www.oxfordowl.co.uk

• www.coxhoe.durham.sch.uk/Curriculum/Literacy.htm

• www.bbc.co.uk/schools/websites/4_11/site/literacy.shtml

• www.ictgames.com/literacy.html