PhonicsPhonicsPhonicsPhonicsTeaching AssistantsTeaching Assistants

1717thth May 2012 May 2012

Read this to your partner.

I pug h fintle bim litchen.

Wigh ar wea dueing thiss?

Ie feall sstewppide!

Aims • To ensure all delegates have an

overview of the teaching of phonics in school.

• To ensure consistent messages regarding the teaching of phonics.

• To update phonic subject knowledge.

Successful reading demands both word level reading and the ability to comprehend what has been read.

This is formalised in “The Simple View of Reading”

Phonics: The priority for training

• ‘It is hardly surprising that training to equip those who are responsible for beginner readers with a good understanding of the core principles and skills of teaching phonic work, including those responsible for intervention programmes, has emerged as a critical issue’

The Rose Report

Independent review of the teaching of early reading, Final report, Jim Rose, March 2006 (DfES 0201-2006DOC-EN. ISBN 1-84478-684-6)

Rose Recommendations

• More attention needs to be given to speaking and listening from the outset.

• High quality, systematic phonic work should be taught discretely and daily and in line with the definition of high quality phonic work as set out in the Rose report.

• Phonics should be set within a broad and rich language curriculum that takes full account of developing the four interdependent strands of language.

• For most children phonics teaching should start by the age of five, subject to the professional judgement of teachers and practitioners.

The Simple View of Reading

• Word-level reading and language comprehension are both necessary to reading

• Neither is sufficient on its own• This is formalised in “The Simple

View of Reading”• Reading comprehension is a product

of word recognition and language comprehension

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-Language comprehension

Word recognition

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Word

Recog

nit

ion

Good language

comprehension, poor word recognition

Good word recognition,

good language comprehensio

n

Poor word recognition,

poor language

comprehension

Good word recognition,

poor language comprehensio

n

Language comprehension

Implications for teaching

• Staff need to be aware that different skills and abilities contribute to development of word recognition skills from those that contribute to comprehension.

• Staff need therefore to keep these two dimensions of reading separate in their minds when they plan their teaching.

Discussion• Consider the conceptual framework –

‘the simple view of reading’.

• On your tables discuss children that you have worked with and where they would be plotted on this graph.

• Consider how you would address their needs through your teaching.

1. What is a phoneme?2. How many phonemes are in the word ‘strap’? 3. a) What is a digraph? b) Give an example4. a) What is a CVC? b) Give an example5. Why has ‘hiss’ got ‘ss’ at the end (and not ‘s’)?6. Why has ‘think’ got a ‘k’ at the end (and not ‘ck’ or

‘c’)?7. a) What is a ‘trigraph’? b) Give an example8. How many phonemes are in the word ‘twenty’? 9. Write down at least four different ways of representing

/ae/10. What is the best guess when you write /ae/ at the end

of a word?

A phonics quiz

Enunciation

• Teaching phonics requires a technical skill in enunciation.

• Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely.

Letters and Sounds• DVD clip -

enunciation

Phonic terminology:some definitions

Some definitions

A phoneme is the smallest unit ofsound in a word.

C-u-p c-a-t d-o-g

Count the phonemes• How many phonemes can you count in

the following words?

• Mask• Car• Jumper• Language• Communication• Success

Some definitionsGrapheme

Letter(s) representing a phoneme

t ai igh

Some definitions

BlendingRecognising the letter soundsin a written word, for examplec-u-p, and merging or synthesisingthem in the order in which theyare written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.

Some definitions

Oral blending

Hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a spoken word – no text is used.

For example, when a teacher calls out ‘b-u-s’, the children say ‘bus’.

This skill is usually taught before blending and reading printed words.

Some definitionsSegmenting

Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word(e.g. h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound to form the word ‘him’.

Some definitionsDigraphTwo letters, which make one sound

A consonant digraph contains two consonantssh ck th ll

A vowel digraph contains at least one vowelai ee ar oy

Some definitionsTrigraph

Three letters, which make one sound

igh dge

Some definitions

Split digraph

A digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent (e.g. make).

Some definitions

Synthetic phonics‘Synthetic phonics refers to an approach to the teaching of reading in which the phonemes [sounds] associated with particular graphemes [letters] are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word. Synthetic phonics for writing reverses the sequence: children are taught to say the word they wish to write, segment it into its phonemes and say them in turn, for example /d, ɔ, g/, and write a grapheme for each phoneme in turn to produce the written word, dog.’Definition adopted by the Rose Report

CVC words

• What do you understand by the term CVC words?

• On your table make a note of five – ten CVC words.

CVC Words

• C consonant phoneme

• V vowel phoneme

• C consonant phoneme

Words sometimes wrongly identified as CVCbow

few

saw

her

Why are these words not CVC words? Discuss.

Consonant digraphs

ll ss ff zzhill puff fizz

sh ch th whship chat thin

ck ng qu xfox sing quick

p i g s h e e ps h i p c a r

b o y c o w

f i l l w h i p s o n g f o r

d a y m i s s

w h i z z h u f f

CVC words – clarifying some misunderstandings

CVC words – clarifying some misunderstandings

• p i g c h i c k

• s h i p c a r X

• b o y X c o w X

• f i l l w h i p

• s o n g f o r X

• d a y X m i s s

• w h i z z huff

ll ss ff zz ck

fill miss whizz huff

chick

Why do these words end in double letters?

Examples of CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC

b l a c k s t r o ngc c v c c c c v c

f e l t b l a n kc v c c c c v c c

A segmenting activity

A segmenting activity

ss

A segmenting activity

s lls

A segmenting activity

s l iils

A segmenting activity

s l i pils p

A segmenting activitySegment these words into their

constituent phonemes:shelfdressthinkstringsprintflick

SegmentingWORD PHONEMES

shelf

dress

think

string

sprint

flick

Segmenting

WORD PHONEMES

shelf sh e l f

dress d r e ss

think th i n k

string s t r i ng

sprint s p r i n t

flick f l i ck

A basic principle The same phoneme can be represented in more than one way:

burn

first

term

heard work

/ae/ /ee/ /ie/ /oe/ /ue/

/oo/ /ow/ /oi/ /ar/ /au/

/ur/ /air/ /ear/ /n/ /j/

/r/ /s/ /e/

Sorting activity• field• grow• moon• swarm• learn• bear• grass

Word Mistakefield /ie/grow /ow/moon /oo/swarm /ar/learn /ear/bear /ear/grass regional pronunciation

A basic principle

meat breadhe bedbear hearcow low

The same phoneme can be represented in more than one way

a a-e ai ay ey eighe e-e ea ee yi i-e ie igh yo o-e oa oe owu u-e ue oo ewoo u oulow ou oughoi oyar aor aw ore a oughair are eareer ear

Certain representations of a phoneme are more likely in

initial, medial and final positionin monosyllabic words.

Reducing uncertainty

1. The best bets for representing /ae/ at the beginning and in the middle of a word are a-e and ai.

2. The best bet for representing /ae/ at the end of a word is ay.

Spelling• There are patterns or regularities that help

to determine choices or narrow possibilities – for example for each vowel phoneme some digraphs and trigraphs are more frequently used before certain consonants than others.

• Children need to explore these patterns through word investigations.

• Staff need to understand these patterns in order to structure their teaching and design or select appropriate activities.

High frequency words

• The majority of high frequency words are phonically regular.

• Some exceptions – for example the and was – should be directly taught.

Key message

The Rose Report recommended that whatever phonic programme is in use by the school, it should have a systematic progression with clear expectations by teachers and practitioners of the expected pace of teaching and learning.

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/rosereview/

To consider• What phonics programme is being used

in our school?• Have you been involved in any way?• Have you spent any time discussing/

observing discrete phonics sessions?• Have you delivered any parts of a

session?• How confident do you feel?• What would you like to be covered in the

next session?