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Welcome to the Early Years Phonics and ReadingWorkshop

The aim of this session

To know what synthetic phonics is and why it is being taught to your child.

To know the way your child is being taught phonics at school.

To have some new ideas about how you can help your child with phonics and reading at home.

The technical bit!

Phoneme- the smallest unit of sound NOT LETTER e.g. ‘a’

Grapheme- a written letter that makes a sound (sound symbol)

Digraph- two letters that make one sound e.g. ‘sh’

Trigraph- three letters that make one sound e.g. ‘ear’, ‘air’, ‘igh’

The technical bit!

How many letters? 26

How many sounds (phonemes)? 44

How many ways to write the sounds(graphemes)? 144

The technical bit!

Segmenting – for spelling, you pull the sounds apart to write the word

Blending- for reading, you push the sounds together to read the word

Segmenting and Blending

It is important to say the sounds correctly:

c -a -t is cat

not cu-a-tu

What is synthetic phonics?

A process where the children are taught the sound each letter makes.

We teach the phonemes or sounds in a specific order so that the children can start to blend and decode which will enable them to read and write.

At KAPSH we follow the Letters and Sounds programme. It is a phonic resource published by the Department for Education and Skills which consists of six phases.

Phonics in the classroom…

Revisit/review Flashcards to practice phonemes learnt so far

Teach Teach new phoneme air

Practice Buried treasure

air, zair, fair, hair, lair, pair, vair, sair, thair

Apply Read captions:

The goat had a long beard.

The quack was right in his ear.

Phonics in the classroom continued…

Tricky words

A word is ‘tricky’ if it has a letter-sound correspondence that is very unusual.

I no go to thewe she me he

be was like

Reading at school

As your child learns phonics they will learn to read words

As they start to read words they will get different levels of reading books

Reading Levels

Reading at home: Expectations

Ask them questions; before, during

and after.

Read with them everyday.

Read to them, tell them stories,

make up stories with them

Reading at home: Importance

Reading to them and not just with them helps

them to develop their literacy, communication,

language and creative skills.

It helps with story writing,

It expands their vocabulary,

It helps them to be imaginative.

How to read at home: Before

Ask them lots of Questions about the

front/back cover of the book e.g.

What do you think the book is about?

What do the pictures tell us?

Where is the authors name?

Where is the illustrators name?

How to read at home: During

Go through the story and discuss the pictures. This will

help them anticipate what will happen next in the story. It

will make reading easier. Stop from time to time and ask:

What do you think will happen next?

If you were that character what would you have done

differently? Why?

Which part did you like/not like? Why?

How does that character feel? How do we know?

How to read at home: After

Ask more questions about what happened and

about books in general

Can you think of another story similar to this?

Which character did you not like? Why?

Would you recommend this book to a friend?

Why?

Changing your child’s reading book

Sign the reading record to show you have heard your child read

Please tuck the book inside of the record

Get them to take it out of their bag and put it in the correct place in their classroom

RA: Yellow Dragon labelled box

RM: Left in book Bag

Assessment and Phonics Screening

Children are assessed daily by their class teacher (informally and formally) and children who need a little extra support are quickly identified and given the support they need.

Year 1 Phonics Screening – June 2021

What will be in the check?

40 words

Progression from easier words to expected level

Real words and non-words

Common real words and less common real words

One syllable and two syllable words

Examples of non-words

What can you do at home?

Encourage your child to notice written language around them.

Share stories everyday

Let them see you reading and writing!

Simple sound games like ‘Eye spy’.

Get them to help write cards, shopping lists etc. This will give them a purpose for using their growing skills.

A final fact

Research shows that if you read for 20 minutes a day over the course of a year you are introduced to 1.8 million words.

Helpful links

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

www.oxfordowl.co.uk

CBBC

Type ‘Jolly Phonics phase 2’ into youtube

https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/

http://www.getreadingright.co.uk/

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

https://www.theschoolrun.com/what-are-phonics-phases