A guide to supporting your child’s reading and phonics development.

At Meadow Lane we give the children lots of opportunities to read:

• Morning box of books

• Big books linked to the topics

• Book areas

• Reading with volunteers

• Parents’ reading mornings

• Guided Reading

• Library

Phonics Quiet Reading

In phonics children learn to read different graphemes, spelling patterns and key words. They practise using and applying these when reading words and sentences.

Children are given the opportunity to read quietly on a regular basis. This helps them to develop their skills independently as well as deepening enjoyment and comprehension.

To foster a love of reading we aim to create comfortable spaces where there are a wide range of books available. The children are therefore encouraged to spend time reading in the library and class books corners.

Library

Guided Reading Shared Reading

Children are taught in a small group. There is a specific focus linked to the children’s reading level and target. It is also an opportunity to model reading behaviours.

This takes place several times a week at story time and in literacy sessions. Usually the focus is on enjoyment, understanding and comprehension skills. The same book is often revisited several times.

Children read individually with a teacher at various times. They may also read more regularly with a literacy volunteer or teaching assistant.

Individual Reading

At Meadow Lane Infant School we believe in the importance of parents and staff working

together to give your child the best start.

Reading at home is one of the most

important things you can do to support your child’s learning as:

Children need to constantly practise learned reading

skills.

Individual reading is focused on your child and what

they need.

It’s an opportunity to foster enjoyment and enthusiasm

for reading.

Choose a time and a text which suits both of you! 5 minutes every evening

Talk about the book together to aid comprehension and enjoyment.

Use phonics and some other strategies to work out what words say.

Begins with books with no words to books with few words in simple sentences, often repeated.

Children begin to understand the conventions of books.

They begin to track print.

They are beginning to use their phonic knowledge to decode words.

They may recognise on sight some simple common words such as the, at, and, in.

They can talk about the stories and the pictures: ◦ Eg Recounting what has happened, answering simple questions,

giving opinions.

Beginning to Read: Early Learning Goals

pink red yellow

Day

Book and Page Number

Remarks

Mon

Six in a Bed Jo talked about the pictures and picked out

the characters

Tues

Weds

Thurs

Fri

Weekend

Guided Reading

Today we matched up our character cards and found them in the book.

Jo knew all of them except Kipper. Lots of enthusiasm.

Week Commencing……22.9.14……………………...……………………………

Home Reading

The children read with the teacher once per week in a group.

Each child has the same book in the group.

The teacher works on skills linked to the Literacy Early Learning Goals.

The teacher will record comments in the Guided Reading box.

Jolly Phonics is a fun and child centered approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. With actions for each of the 42 letter sounds, the multi-sensory method is very motivating for children and teachers. The letter sounds are split into seven groups.

1. s a t p I n

2. ck e h r m d

3. g o u l f b

4. ai j oa ie ee or

5. z w ng v oo 00

6. y x ch sh th th

7. qu ou oi ue er ar

Five skills taught in Jolly Phonics

1.Learning the letter sounds

Children are taught the 42 main letter sounds. This includes alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.

2.Learning letter formation

Using different multi-sensory methods, children learn how to form and write the letters.

3.Blending

Children are taught how to blend the sounds together to read and write new words.

4.Identifying the sounds in words (Segmenting)

Listening for the sounds in words gives children the best start for improving spelling.

5.Tricky words

Tricky words have irregular spellings and children learn these separately.

http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

Decoding

Tricky words

Magic ‘e’

Segmenting

Blending

Sound Button

Grapheme

Phoneme

Phonics

Sounding out

The smallest unit of sound in a word

A written

representation

of a phoneme

Eg, a, ai, igh

Imaginary

‘button’ under

phonemes

Running sounds

together to make a

word eg c- a- t

Splitting words up to work out

which phonemes are in them

Makes the

vowels in words

say their names

make, eve, pine, hope, tune,

Commonly

occuring

words which

are tricky to

decode

f l a g

Some words cannot be decoded phonetically.

These are often the more common words in the English language. For example was, said, the, of, he, me.

They cannot be sounded out so children just have to learn them. For example through: ◦ Look, cover, write, check

Have fun with reading Talk about the text with your child

Use phonics first Press the sound buttons as you read

Remember the tricky words