Phonics

Knowledge of the alphabetic code (the sounds)

Skills of segmentation and blending

Phonics is...

Phoneme – smallest unit of sound in a word.

Grapheme – a letter or sequence of letters that represents a phoneme.

Digraph – 2 letters making 1 sound (ai, ee, oa)

Trigraph – 3 letters making 1 sound (igh, air, ear)

Split digraph – where the 2 letters are not adjacent (i-e in the word fine)

Blending for reading – recognising letters sounds in a word and merging them to pronounce the word.

Segmentation for spelling – identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word and writing down letters for each sound.

Terminology

1. f l m n r s sh v th z (continuous phonemes)

2. e p t ch h (unvoiced)

3. b d g w qu y j (voiced)

Pronouncing Phonemes

Key Principles• Sounds/phonemes are represented by letters

• A phoneme can be represented by one or more letters e.g. Sh, th, ee, etc

• The same phoneme can be represented/ spelled in more than one way e.g. rain, may, lake

• The same spelling may represent more than one sound e.g. mean, deaf

• Split into 6 phases: Phase 1 – Pre-schoolPhase 2 -4 – ReceptionPhase 5 – Year 1Phase 6 – Year 2

Phase 1• Environmental sounds

• Instrumental sounds

• Body percussion

• Rhythm and Rhyme

• Alliteration

• Voice sounds

• Oral blending and segmenting

Sounds are introduced in sets

Set 1: s a t p Set 2: i n m d Set 3: g o c k Set 4: ck e u r Set 5: h b f ff l ll ssThis phase will involve learning this letter set and blending and segmenting. Children begin to read simple captions.

Phase 2

s a t p i n m d

make as many CVC & CV words as you can.

Activity: How many words can you make?

rain bright

witch laughter

Sound buttons

Letter progression and graphemes continued

Set 6: j v w xSet 7: y z zz quSet 8: ch sh th ngTeach: ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi

ear air ure er Children read and spell a range of words and learn over 25 new sounds introduced 1 at time.

Phase 3

pig p i gchurch ch ur chboycurlthornchickdownshirt

Can you use the phoneme frame to work out how many sounds there are in these words?

No new sounds are taught. Children begin to read two-syllable words

and simple sentences. Children read and spell tricky words. Main aim is the consolidation of children’s

knowledge and to help them read and spell words which have adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and milk.

Phase 4: Consolidation

Children entering Phase Five will already be able to read and spell words with adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and flask. They will also be able to read and spell some polysyllabic words.

In Phase Five, children will learn more graphemes and phonemes. For example, they already know ai as in rain, but now they will be introduced to ay as in day and a-e as in make.

Alternative pronunciations for graphemes will also be introduced, e.g. ea in tea, head and break.

When spelling words they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.

Phase 5

ai ay a_eRainPaintStain   

DayStayLayTray  

CakeSnakeMane 

Best Bet

What patterns do you notice?

Where are the sounds in the word?

What grapheme would you choose to spell the word ‘bay’ and

why?

The School Sale

It was the day of the school sale. Mum could not go as she had

a pain in her knee, so Gran said she would take Kate and Wayne.

They could not wait!

At the school gate, Gran paid 20p to get in. She did not have to

pay for Kate and Wayne – it was free for children!

As soon as they were through the gate, Gran gave Wayne and

Kate £1 each to spend, and told them not to go too far away.

The sun was shining. “It’s as hot as Spain!” said Gran. “I think I

need a cup of tea.”

At the tea stall, a lady put Gran’s tea on a tray, and Gran went to

find a place to sit in the shade. Meanwhile, Kate and Wayne went round the stalls. Kate had her face painted like a rainbow and had a go on the “Name a Teddy”

stall. They both had a go on the “Pin the tail on the donkey”. It was quite safe – the donkey was only made of paper! When the sale was nearly over, Kate and Wayne went back and found Gran fast asleep under the tree. “What a shame,” said

Kate, “she’s missed all the fun!”

Sound spotter stories

Children are taught to recognise phonics irregularities and become more secure with letter common ways of writing certain sounds.

Begin to use phonic skill to recognise and spell increasingly complex words. There spelling will probably phonetic with some irregularities. Spelling tends to lag behind reading.

Past tense is introduced. (eg, I looked.) Investigate and learn suffixes (eg, ed, ing, er) Taught spelling of long words. Find and learn the difficult bit in words.

Phase 6 – Year 2

Children are grouped for daily phonics sessions of around 20 minutes.

Children always work within the phase that is appropriate to their learning.

Assessment is regular and groupings are fluid. The Letters and Sounds progression of year

groups and phases may not go hand in hand, depending on the progression of the children.

Organisation

Phonics PlayOxford OwlSchool WebsiteReading and re-reading at home!

Useful Websites

Thank you for coming along this evening. We hope you found it useful.

Thank you!