An Introduction to Phonics

“wee orl hav ay strong nolij and ferm understanding ov hou langwij werx”

• To introduce Phonics and to explain how it is used at school to teach reading and writing.

• To develop your confidence in supporting your child with their reading and writing at home.

• To provide some ideas for phonics games and activities to try with your child at home.

Objectives

Letters and Sounds • Jim Rose’s (2006) review of early reading

concluded that high quality phonic work shouldbe the prime means of teaching children how toread and write.

• As a result, the government developed a phonicsprogramme, based on best practice seen insuccessful settings. Letters and Sounds is a 6phase teaching programme which is designed torun from FS1 toYear 2.

• Phonics sessions take place for 15-20 minutesevery day, as pace, repetition and frequency areessential.

word recognition

language comprehension

g

o

o

d

poor

goodpoor

Good word recognition, good

language comprehension

Good language comprehension, poor

word recognition

Poor word recognition, poor language

comprehension

Good word recognition, poor

language comprehension

The Simple View of Reading

Phonics is…

grapheme-phoneme correspondences

segmenting and blending sounds

+

The 44 phonemesTry to use ‘Pure Sounds’ when pronouncing the letter sounds

s a t p i n m d g o c

e u r h b f l j v w x

y z qu ch sh th th ng ai ee igh

oa oo oo ar or er ow oi ear air ure

Basic and Advanced Codes

Basic Code (taught in EYFS)One way of representing each of the 40+ sounds e.g. /ee/ Expect to see taught graphemes appearing in children’s writing! (taic for take)

Advanced Code (taught in Years 1 and 2)Alternative ways of representing each of the 40+ soundsteabe baby babies keytaxireceive Pete

How many sounds?

tray train green bike find

snow tea night thigh spoil

shark snore zoo chew sunny

stairs no town hear holiday

Model how to use a phoneme frame

How many sounds?

t-r-ay3

t-r-ai-n4

g-r-ee-n 4

b-i-k(e)3

f-i-n-d4

s-n-ow3

t-ea2

n-igh-t 3

th-igh2

s-p-oi-l4

sh-ar-k3

s-n-ore3

z-oo2

ch-ew2

s-u-nn-y4

s-t-air-s4

n-o 2

t-ow-n3

h-ear2

h-o-l-i-d-

ay 6

Phonics Session

• Revisit/review (previously learned phonemes/tricky words)

• Teach 1 (me!) (new phonemes/tricky words)

• Practise (us!)

• Teach 2 (me!) (read or write words with new phonemes)

• Practise (us!)

• Apply (you!) (read or write a sentence using tricky

words and new phonemes)

Some phonics jargon!

Phoneme the smallest unit of sound in a word (sh in sheep, t in it)

Grapheme the letter shape that represents the letter sound

Digraph two letters that make one single sound (sh, ch, oo, ee)

VC words made up of a vowel and a consonant (it, an)

CVC words made of a consonant, vowel, consonant (g-e-t, p-ai-n)

Tricky word can’t be spelt or read by sounding it out (the, does, was)

Segment break a word into individual sounds (chain → ch-ai-n)

Blend push individual sounds together to make a word (ch-ai-n → chain)

Split vowel digraph two vowels making one sound, separated by a consonant (a-e make, o-e home)

Cluster two or three consonants making two or three sounds, (the first three

letters of ‘straight‘ or the first two letters of ‘green’ are consonant clusters)

The Six Phases

Phase Descriptors

1 Develop listening skills and awareness of sounds in the environment. Begin to orally blend & segment words, and explore & experiment with sounds & words (through listening walks, drumming, sound stories, sound lotto etc.).

2 Learn 19 phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and move on from oral blending and segmenting to blending and segmenting with letters. Read and spell some two and three letter words. The first 6 tricky words (I, go, no, the, to, into) are taught.

3 Learn the remaining 25 phoneme-grapheme correspondences, most of which comprise of 2 letters (digraphs). Continue reading and spelling CVC words and tricky words, and applying this knowledge to read and write simple captions and sentences. Learn the letter names of the alphabet (e.g. ay, bee, see, dee).

4 Consolidate knowledge of all letter sounds and digraphs taught through reading and spelling poly-syllabic words, and words that contain consonant clusters.

5 Learn alternative spellings for digraphs (ai, ay, a, a-e, eigh, ey) and alternative pronunciations of previously taught digraphs (ea in leaf, ea in bread)

6 Children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers, looking at suffixes and prefixes, plurals, tenses and three-syllable words.

Assessment

We informally assess the children all the time during Phonicslessons, and when we read and write with them each week.

We formally assess them at the end each term by checkingwhich letter sounds, digraphs and words they know to ensurethat they are progressing through the phases as expected. Thishelps to inform our planning and put additional interventionsupport in place where necessary.

Foundation Stage 1: Phase 1, introduce Phase 2

Foundation Stage 2: Phases 2, 3 and 4

Year 1: Phase 5

Year 2: Phase 6

Phase Coverage

Phase OneSome children may still need some support with phase 1

Aspect 1: Environmental sounds e.g. stories – walk aroundthe local area. What can you hear?

Aspect 2: Instrumental sounds e.g. bags of instruments – addsounds effects

Aspect 3: Body percussion e.g. action songs and rhymes

Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme e.g. Rhyming stories – whatrhymes with….?

Aspect 5: Alliteration e.g. having fun with names, storycharacters

Aspect 6: Voice sounds e.g. adding different voices to stories

Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting e.g. robot speechc-a-t and put it together.

Activities and Games

• Sound buttons/phoneme count

• Sound Talk instructions (e.g. Old Macdonald or Simon Says)

• Buried Treasure (words/non words)

• ‘I spy’ (something beginning, or ending, or rhyming with…)

• Display tricky words around the house (e.g. bedroom bunting)

• ‘Real life’ writing (lists, cards, letters, invitations)

• Read stories regularly, and signs and labels (e.g. roads, shops)

• Flashcards

• Fridge magnets

• Foam letters in the bath

• Silly Soup (alliteration)

• Letter formation in the sand

• Explore rhymes, nonsense words

• Literacy games, websites, apps

• Watch ‘Alphablocks’ on CBeebies

• Bingo (letters, digraphs or words)

• Quick-write

• 4 corners

Teaching ‘Tricky’ Words

• Write the word three times or trace over it

• Write a word on paper, cut out each letter, then put the letters back in the right order to make the word again

• Write the word, draw round the shape of it and cut it out

• Look, say, cover, visualise, write, check

• Point out smaller ‘words’ inside the word

• Put the word into a sentence so that it makes sense

• Find words with similar patterns. e.g. the, them, they

• Play ‘Tricky Word Bingo’

By using Phonics strategies alone, some children:

• Can read a text but don’t understand it, or at least can’t explaintheir understanding.

• Decode accurately but read slowly, sounding out every singleword, even simple high frequency CVC words, so reading lacksfluency.

• Read too fast and don’t pay attention to what they are reading.By rushing they are not reading for enjoyment or pleasure, orgetting engrossed with the story.

• May be able to summarise the main events but can’t give details.

• Read text avidly but never question the meaning of the words orwhat they have read.

Phonics is essential… but not sufficient

Reading is a complex process

Research set out to explore the connections between parentsreading to their young children and their child’s later reading andother cognitive skills. (The University of Melbourne 2012).

Key findings:• The frequency of reading to children at a young age has a direct

effect on their schooling outcomes, regardless of their familybackground and home environment.

• Reading to children aged 4-5 years old every day has asignificant effect on their reading skills and cognitive skills (i.e.language and literacy, numeracy and cognition) later in life.

• Reading to children aged 4-5 years old 3-5 days per week(compared to 2 or less) has the same effect on the child’sreading skills at age 4-5 as being six months older.

• Reading to children aged 4-5 years old 6-7 days per week hasthe same effect as being almost 12 months older.

The Importance of Regular Reading

• Need to focus on developing comprehension skills, as well asPhonics skills and word recognition.

• Lots of meaningful interaction and discussion to help your childdevelop an understanding of the text that they are reading.

• Modelling effective reading strategies to enable your child todevelop and use these skills independently.

• The power of ‘Wondering’ (what, where, when, who, if, why, how)creates a safe space where there is no right or wrong answer, andencourages your child to make inferences about the text theyhave read, reading between the lines.

How can we develop effective reading?

1. The

characters in

this story are…

2. The story is

set…4. The problem is…

3. The story starts…

5. The

problem is

solved

because … The

story ends.

Talk Like a Book

Predict Make predictions about the text: What might this book be about? What might happen next? What could they do? How do you think it will end?

Clarify Check understanding: Which words and phrases do we need to find the meaning of? Do you know what that word means? Have you ever heard anyone say that before? What are they saying?

Question Focus on inference and not just retrieval of basic information. Maybe it is because…, Perhaps…, I wonder if…, The author is trying to…, I think that…,It makes me think about…

Summarise Identify the main or most important information in the text, sift out the main ideas and discount less relevant/important details. Putting a summary in to their own words requires information to be understood and transformed. What have you learnt from this book? What happened in the story?

The Key Strategies

1. Set aside time: make 10 minutes to get cosy and comfy, focus your full attention on your child. Tell them you are looking forward to sharing a book with them.

2. Predict: discuss the cover pictures, the blurb, the author and illustrator and make predictions about the text. What might it be about? What might happen? Does it remind you of any other books you have read?

3. Read: encourage your child to point to each word as they read it to develop one to one correspondence (similar to one to one object counting in Maths), whilst on Pink or Red book band level. (Don’t point for them!) If they have difficulty reading a word, don’t tell them it; encourage them to be an independent problem solver: How could you work it out? What word would make sense? What sound does is begin with? Is there a picture? Is it a tricky word? Has it got a digraph? Can you sound it out?)

4. Question and Clarify: check understanding of new vocabulary. Ask questions and ‘wonder’, (I wonder why…. I wonder how… I wonder what would happen if…)

5. Summarise: What happened in the story, at the beginning, middle and end. 6. Respond: relate to own experiences – Have you ever felt like that/seen one of those/been

there? What was your favourite part of the story?7. Words/sentence: write a sentence from the text on paper, and cut up each word. Ask

your child to read the words and put them back into order. This teaches punctuation, sentence structure, grammar, recognising High Frequency Words, and Phonics.

8. Praise: Specific praise for effort: You were a Professor Perseverance sounding out that word, You were a Have a Go Hero tackling that sentence, You were a Link and Learn Legend remembering that from last week’s book, You were a Captain Curiosity wondering what that word meant, You were such an Agent Concentrate, focusing on the book.

How to hear your child read

Inside your child’s book bag:

• High frequency ‘Tricky Words’ – practise reading, then spelling them

• Letter sound tiles – use them as flashcards to say the sound each letter (or digraph) represents, then use them to spell (segment) and read (blend) simple words with

• Reading records – write in each time (even just the date and ’read it’), so that we know if your child’s book needs changing

• Reading books – read at least three times a week, but also share a variety of other ‘normal’ books with your child

• Jolly Phonics actions and songs

Children are often more willing and engaged in reading and writing if theyfeel that there is some purpose or excitement to it. They also need toknow why it is so important to learn how to read and write, and see itapplied in everyday life.

Here a few examples you could try…

• simple clues for a treasure hunt

• instructions for crew on a pirate ship

• postcard from a holiday

• letter from a relative or friend

• recipe for a cake

• Christmas or birthday list

• invitations, cards or thank-you notes

• shopping lists, signs and prices

• messages from toys (e.g. Elf on the Shelf)

• menus

• comics and magazines

• make mini-books (folded up paper)

• spy clues or secret messages

Reading and Writing for a Purpose

Websites

www.letters-and-sounds.com/

readingeggs.co.uk/login/

www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html/

home.oxfordowl.co.uk/

www.educationcity.com/ (Letter and Sounds)

Apps

Phonics Fun on Farm

Phonics Play

Teach your Monster to Read

Alphablocks

A final word from Dr Seuss…

Questions?