Session Outline Background and importance of phonics What

Session Outline • Background and importance of phonics • What is phonics? • Structure of phonics teaching • Progression through the phases • Ideas for supporting phonics

Background to Phonics • Following Government guidance called Letters and Sounds • The Intention is to “…equip children who are 5 with the phonic knowledge and skills they need to become fluent readers by the age of 7. ” • By the end of Year Two children should have completed phase 6. • Phonics is crucial, as it aids the early reading development of children.

Blending • Blending is the process of saying the individual sounds in a word and then running them together to read the word. E. g d- o- g and making dog. • Some sounds (digraphs) are represented by two letters, such as sh. • Some words in English have an irregular spelling and cannot be read by blending, such as said, was and one. These are called the ‘tricky words’.

Segmenting • The easiest way to know how to spell a word is to listen for the sounds in that word. • Take care with digraphs. The word fish, for example, has four letters but only three sounds, f-i-sh. • Rhyming games and poems help here.

Structure of Phonics • Daily for 20 to 25 minutes. 1. Revisiting and revising previous sounds and tricky words. 2. Teaching a new sound or spelling. 3. Practise reading and spelling the new sound. 4. Apply the new sound by reading and writing sentences using words containing the new sound.

Progression • End of year 1 the children will complete a Phonics Screening test. • Results of the screening check help to inform the teachers of any gaps in their phonics knowledge that need to be addressed. • However, all children progress through the 6 stages.

Phase One • Children develop their ability to explore, recognise and create sounds in the world around them. • Children begin to understand the importance of sounds and how to distinguish between them.

Phase Two • At this point the children are introduced to the majority of the sounds in the alphabet. • Children learn sounds not in alphabetical order. • The children begin to learn a small selection of sounds which they begin to apply.

Phase Three • Children are taught one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes. • Children continue to learn to link sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet. • Recognise common digraphs such as ‘th’ and trigraphs ‘igh’.

Phase Four • Children are taught to read and spell words containing consonant clusters. • Children will be able to blend and segment consonant clusters in words and apply this skill when reading and spelling. • Children will move from CVC words such as ‘pot’, to more complex words such as ‘crunch’.

Phase Five • Children learn to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the phonemes already taught. • Children will learn to use these alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes (e. g. the ‘c’ in coat and city). • Children begin to recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically.

Phase Six • Children develop their skill and ability to read words automatically in reading and spelling. • They will apply phonic knowledge to recognise and spell an increasing number of complex words. • Children will be able to read an increasing number of high and medium frequency words independently and automatically. • At this stage we move onto other areas including suffixes and syllables.

Ideas for Phonics Activities • Sound Buttons: fish – f – i – sh lunch – l – u –n - ch

Your turn… • Can you add the sound buttons to the following words… • • chip church scream paintbrush

Ideas for Phonics Activities • Phonics Play: www. phonicsplay. co. uk www. spellingplay. co. uk www. sentenceplay. co. uk Let’s have a go at the Obb and Bob game!

Thank you for coming! Please take time to explore the resources and to ask any questions.