Reading and PhonicsBuryfields Infant School

Reading

We are aiming for your child to become a confident and competent reader who reads for enjoyment.

This takes a lot of hard work from your child, from us and from you.

The experience will be different for each child.

Our approach to reading is phonic based with some word recognition.

English is Complex!

• A phoneme is a speech sound (44)

A grapheme is a spelling choice (120+)

• In the early stages, the reading and spelling of words involves hypothesis testing!

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Grapheme Choices – long vowel sounds

A – ai (train), ay (tray), a-e (cake), ey (grey)

E – e (me), ee (sweet), ea (treat)

I – i (tiger), y (my), ie (tie), i-e (kite), igh (high)

O – oa (boat), ow (show), o-e (mole)

U – u–e (mule) + oo (moon), ew (screw),

ue (glue)

Phonics at a glance

phonics is

skills ofsegmentationand blending

knowledge ofthe alphabetic

code+

Blending and SegmentationBlending

• Merging the individual phonemes together to pronounce a word.

• To read unfamiliar words a child must recognise (sound out) each grapheme, not each letter, then merge the phonemes together to

make a word.

Segmentation

• Hear and say the individual phonemes within words.

• In order to spell, children need to segment a word into its component

phonemes and choose a grapheme to represent each phoneme.

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Phase 3

• Introduces another 25 graphemes – most of which comprise of two letters

• One representation for each of the 44 phonemes

• Reading and spelling single syllable (CVC) words and captions

Phase 3Letter Progression and graphemes continued

• Set 6: j v w x

• Set 7: y z zz qu

• ch sh th ng

• Set 8:

• ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er

• ( order not determined)

Some definitions

Digraph

Two letters, which make one phoneme.

A consonant digraph contains 2 consonants:

sh ck th ll

A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel:

ai ee ar oy

Some definitions

Trigraph

Three letters, which make one phoneme.

igh air ure ear

Some definitions

Split digraph

A digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent – e.g. ‘make’.

Phoneme frame

ao e

Aoccdrnig to rschaerch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmortnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers are in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

It takes time and practice to become a competent reader. When you do become a competent reader word recognition rather than phonic knowledge is the key.

Remember…

• Phonics is the step up to word recognition

• Automatic reading of all words –

decodable and tricky – is the ultimate goal

• Confidence in building word-specific knowledge of the spelling of words

• Continuous language development

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