Year 1

Phonics

Parent

Information

Session

October 2019

Meeting objectives

• To understand what the Y1 Phonics Screening Check is

• To have an overview of how we teach phonics at school.

• To look at cursive handwriting

• How you as parents/ families can help your child at home

• To answer any of your questions

•Children are taught to read by breaking down

words into separate sounds or ‘phonemes’

(segmenting). They are then taught how to blend

these sounds together to read the whole word

•Children are encouraged to use these sounds to

read, spell and write in other lessons

What is phonics?

•Spoken English is generally thought to use 44 sounds or

‘phonemes’. Twenty of these are vowel sounds and 24 are

consonant sounds.

•Phoneme – smallest unit of sound in a word for example

c-a-t in cat or sh-o-p in shop.

•Blend – two or three single sounds but said together very

quickly as in bl, cr, dr, gl, thr . Make sure that the

children are very clear that these still count as separate

sounds.

•Lets go through the sounds together and the corresponding

actions!

• Digraph- 2 letters representing one new sound –

eg c and h saying ch in chop or o and a saying o in coat

• Trigraph- 3 letters making one new sound – eg igh

saying i in night and a, i and r saying air in fair

• Split digraphs- 2 vowels making one new sound with a

consonant in between (magic e) – shine the i and the e

making the i sound

Terminology

• It is really important that children learn the names of the

letters as well as the sounds they represent. By the end of

Foundation Stage children are expected to know and be able to

use both sounds and letter names.

• When segmenting a word like Tuesday T-ue-s-d-ay it has 5

sounds but 7 letters. Children must refer to ay as the a sound

and not a y when blending and segmenting. Similarly the word

flower f-l-ow–er has 4 sounds but it has 6 letters

• Children need to continuously revisit the sound patterns they

have learnt to ensure that they are not just learning them for

their weekly spelling test.

Important points to remember

• Children really begin to struggle with phonics when they are

presented with different ways of representing one sound. This is

why continuous revision of sound patterns is essential.

e.g. the i sound can be written as:

ie, igh, y at the end of a word, or i magic e

• With time and practise children will begin to recognise and

apply patterns and rules for example with the a sound ay is

used at the end of a word and ai is used in the middle of a

word

e.g p-l-ay and r-ai-n

Important points to remember

• We often use the idea of sound buttons with the children. Give

your child a word and ask them to write the sound buttons

underneath. A small circle indicates a single sound and a large

oval represents a digraph or trigraph. For example

octopus rainbow

Sound Buttons

• We also use these phoneme frames as a strategy to help

children distinguish between different sounds in a word. One

sound fits into a box for example

• Draw a phoneme frame if your child is struggling to spell a

word. Remember the number of boxes matches the number of

sounds in a word and NOT the number of letters.

• Encourage your child to put in the sounds they already know.

Phoneme Frame

b oa t

Useful websites to help your child at home.

www.letters-and-sounds.co.ukinteractive games and resources Mr Thorne does phonics

Clips available on You Tube

BBC Words and Picturesinteractive games and resources

Phonicsplay.co.uk interactive games

• Espresso has a fantastic

section on Phonics with

video clips for each

individual sound.

• Introduced 5 years ago

• Every Year 1 child in the country will take the

assessment in the same week

• Starting week beginning 8th June

• The check is very similar to tasks the children

already complete during phonics lessons

What is the screening

check?

Nonsense Words

• 40 words

• 20 real/ 20 nonsense

• Nonsense words have an

Alien/ monster image next

to them

You will be informed in the

Summer report as to whether

You child has met or has

not met the required standard

• 1:1 with a teacher

• 2 to 10 minutes

• Rest breaks if necessary

• In a quiet room

How will it be carried out?

How school will support?

• Daily phonics 20 minutes

• Differentiated groups

• Send home spellings weekly to learn to read and spell

consolidating sounds taught in school

• On going assessments every half term/ sounds and tricky

words

• Interventions to boost gaps from now and throughout the

year

• At St George’s we use the cursive style of handwriting. We have

found that this style has had a huge impact on the quality of

handwriting across the school.

• We teach the children to write every letter with an entry and

exit stroke. This is a much better foundation for teaching joined

handwriting as they get older. Children are taught that

every letter starts on the line

Handwriting