Letters and SoundsPhonics information for parents

What is Letters and Sounds ?

• Letters and Sounds – government document which most English schools teach.

• Phase 1 is usually taught in Pre-Schools/ Nursery and then recapped in Reception

• Phase 2 is recommended to start in Reception.• Children will continue learning new sounds

throughout Y1 and Y2 and the skills learned are continued throughout school

• Multi Sensory Approach -Jolly phonics actions• Importance of pronouncing sounds correctly

Teaching a sound• Each day a new letter SOUND is introduced(not the capital letter name)• Usually 3-4 new sounds are taught a week and

these are then revised on a Friday• Each sound has an action and is introduced using a

story/song.

Structure of a typical Lesson1. Revise and revisit sounds learned2. Introduce a new sound3. Read and write words containing that sound4. Practising skills

• After teaching the single sounds (phonemes) we then teach sounds which are made up of 2 letters (diagraphs e.g. ai, ee, oo, oa)

• There are also some trigraphs, such as igh, air, ure

• The pace becomes a little slower.

Blending and Segmenting

2 key skills to help us read and write

Blending

Blending for reading1. Children need to learn to recognise each

soundi.e. the sounds in cat are c/a/t2. Next children need to be able to put these

sounds together (blend).

Segmenting

To help children to write words themselves they need to hear the sounds in each word.

Usually children are able to hear the first sound, then with practise they can hear the last sound and middle vowels come last.

Guided/Individual reading

Blending and Segmenting skillls are then put into practise in reading and writing activities.

During reading we have a strong focus on COMPREHENSION

- What are the character’s feeling? - what has just happened? - predicting what might happen next?(using pictures, word clues, the context, their

own experiences to UNDERSTAND what they are reading)

Tricky words

• These are TRICKY!• Go against all rules that children are learning!• No other way to read/write them other than

memorising• PRACTISE AGAIN AND AGAIN IN DIFFERENT

WAYS

Home Learning

Children need to practise these skills during their home learning tasks.

Don’t worry about misspelt words! Please don’t just tell your child the letters in every

word.

Phonetically plausible words are accepted e.g Elephant – elifant this may start off as eft or elft