Phonics Workshop for Parents

Supporting your child with phonics and reading

Learning Intentions

To understand the importance of phonics.

To get an idea of how phonics is taught in school.

To understand the progression through phonic phases and how to support and develop children’s learning.

What can I do at home?

Can you read and understand this?

I pug h fintle bim litchen.

Wigh ar wea dueing thiss?

Ie feall sstewppide!

Why Phonics?

The aim is to secure essential phonics knowledge and skills so that children can progress quickly to independent reading and writing.

Reading and writing are like a code: phonics is teaching the child to crack the code.

Gives us the skills of blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

High quality phonics work…

• Interactive multi-sensory phonic session at their own level.

A session led by a member of staff of shared readingand/or shared writing.

Opportunities for independent reading and writing.

Pace and progression is key.

• We use the ‘Letters and Sounds’ principles and practice of high-quality phonics. ‘Letters and Sounds’ is also used alongside the ‘Read Write Inc’ phonics programme.

Technical vocabulary

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. A phoneme may be represented by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters.

Eg. t ai igh

A syllable is a word or part of a word that contains one vowel sound. E.g. hap/pen bas/ket let/ter

A grapheme is the letter(s) representing a phoneme. Written representation of a sound which may consist of 1 or more letters eg. The phoneme ‘s’ can be represented by the grapheme s (sun), se (mouse), c (city), sc or ce (science)

Technical vocabulary

A digraph is two letters, which make one sound.◦ A consonant digraph contains two consonants

sh th ck ll

◦ A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel

ai ee ar oy

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

A trigraph is three letters, which make one sound. E.g. igh dge

Technical vocabulary

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.

Blending – recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.

Segmenting – 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’.

Technical vocabulary

REMEMBER!

CVC refers to phonemes NOT LETTERS!

Phase 1 – Nursery & Ongoing

• To develop language and increase vocabulary through speaking and listening activities.

• To develop phonological awareness.

• To distinguish between sounds.

• To speak clearly and audibly with confidence and control.

• To become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration.

• Use sound talk to segment words into phonemes.

• Example activities - listening walks, dodgems, Silly Soup, rhyming chants/songs,

Phase 2 – ReceptionTo introduce grapheme-phoneme correspondences

Children know that words are constructed from phonemes and that phonemes are represented by graphemes.

They have knowledge of a small selection of common consonants and vowels – only 19!

They blend them together in reading simple CVC words and segment them to support spelling. – use of magnetic letters!

Correct Articulation of phonemes is essential!

Pronunciation - not ‘uh’ on the end –use soft voice!

Video – Pronunciation Guide

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/resources/sound-pronunciation-guide/

Phase 2 – Example Activities

Sound Buttons on green word cards

Cross the River

Phase 3 - Reception

To teach children one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes in order to read and spell simple regular words.

Naming and sounding letters of the alphabet.

Recognise letter shapes and say a sound for each

Hear and say sounds in the order in which they occur, and read simple words by sounding out and blending.

Recognise common digraphs and read some high frequency words.

Phase 4 – Reception/Year 1

To teach children to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants and polysylabicwords.

Teaching should focus on the skills of blending and segmenting words containing adjacent consonants.

They should not be taught in word families such as spot, spit, spin as the children will treat ‘sp’ as one unit.

Phase 4

Children now have the ability to blend and segment therefore they are moving beyond simple cvc words to cvcc, ccvc, ccvcc and cccvc.

b l a ck s t r o ng

c c v c c c c v c

f e l t b l a n k

c v c c c c v c c

Phase 5 – Year 1

To teach children to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the phonemes already taught.

Teaching the long vowel phonemes

Read and spell phonetically decodable 2/3 syllable words e.g. bleating, frogspawn, shopkeeper.

Choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes when spelling words.

Recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically.

Spelling complex words using phonetically plausible attempts

ai a-e ay

Seeing themselves as writers!

Year 1 Phonics Screening

• A screening check for year one to encourage schools to pursue a rigourous phonics programme.

• Aimed at identifying the children who need extra help are given the support.

• Assesses decoding skills using phonics

• 40 items to be read (20 real words, 20 pseudo words)

• If children do not pass in Year 1 they have to retake the test at the end of Year 2.

Tracking and Progress

• Children are assessed briefly throughout each session to ensure understanding and good progression.

• Children are assessed each half term.

• Children move teaching groups to accommodate their need and ability.

• Year 1 Phonics screening check.

How can I help? - Reading Books

Your child will be bringing home two reading books each week. Talk about the book, the character, what is happening in the story, predict what may happen next. Encourage a love of reading – not a chore!

Phonics Sound Book – to support the phonics learnt at school.

• Words First Pot

What else can I do at home?

• Ask your child to find items around the house that represent particular sounds, i.e. ‘oo’ - ‘spoon’ ‘bedroom’

• Play matching pairs – with key words or individual sounds/pictures.

• Key words on the stairs

• Flashcard letters and words – how quickly can they read them?

• Notice words/letters in the environment.

• Go on a listening walk around the house/when out and about.

• Lots of activities online for children to practice their phonic knowledge.

Phonics games websites

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com

http://www.ictgames.com

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/Phase2Menu.htm

http://www.tesphonics.com/

www.activelearnprimary.co.uk (Bug Club)