Thursday 27th November 2014

know what synthetic phonics is and why it is being taught to your child.

know the way your child is being taught phonics at school.

have some new ideas about how you can help your child with phonics at home.

Phoneme- the smallest unit of sound e.g. ‘a.’

Grapheme- a written letter that makes a sound (sound symbol).

Digraph- two letters that make one sound e.g. ‘sh.’

Trigraph- three letters that make one sound e.g. ‘ear’, ‘air’, ‘igh.’

Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, forexample c-u-p, and merging them in the order inwhich they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup.’

Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word(e.g. h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating lettersfor each sound to form the word ‘him.’

A word is ‘tricky’ if it has a letter-sound correspondence that is very unusual.

your people Mr Mrs some should because

said one are

or has not yet been taughte.g. like

A ‘high-frequency’ word is one that can be sounded outbut occurs so frequently in books that in order to becomefluent readers the children need to recognise them on sight.

on at and will had in as that

NurseryPhase 1Listening to noises:

Environmental

Instrumental

Speech sound discrimination

Making sounds with their own voices

Nursery Phase 1 Teachers plan activities that will help children to listen

attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys and those in spoken language.

Teachers teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs.

They read good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words they know (their vocabulary) and helps them talk confidently about books.

Children are not taught alphabetically but in anorder that will enable them to read successfullyimmediately.

s a t p i n

How many words can you make with the 6 graphemes above?

Your child will be taught how to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) correctly to make blending easier.

Sounds should be sustained where possible (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be reduced as far as possible (e.g. try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’).

Reception follow the Jolly Phonics program to teachactions and reinforce the sounds.http://jollylearning.co.uk/

ReceptionThe purpose of this phase is to: teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two

letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat. practise blending and segmenting a wider set of words,

for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light. learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly

using the school handwriting scheme. read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them. read and write words in phrases and sentences.

Reception Teach children to read and spell words containing

adjacent consonants (clump, tent) and some simple compound words (windmill).

Consolidates knowledge of letters and sounds. Introduces adjacent consonants. No new phonemes are taught. Typical duration: 4-6 weeks.

Year 1 Children are taught to recognise and use

alternative ways of pronouncing and spelling the graphemes already taught.

cake train play

a a-e ai ay ey eigh e e-e ea ee y i i-e ie igh y o o-e oa oe ow u u-e ue oo ew oo u ow ou ough oi oy ar a or aw ore a ough air are ear eer ear

Spelling and the new curriculum

Children are taught to develop their skill and automaticity in reading, creating ever-increasingcapacity to read for meaning.

Children are taught spelling patterns and rules suchas word endings (s, es, ly), prefixes and usingapostrophes correctly.

Daily 25 minute whole class phonics input inwhich children:

Recap the phonemes (or sounds) that they have been learning.

Learn a new phoneme or tricky word. Learn to write the grapheme (also focussing on

letter formation). Apply what they have learnt to a game, new word or

a sentence.

Along with the daily phonics sessions children will be heard read by their class teacher in a guided group each week.

Phonics is reinforced throughout the curriculum.

Children will expected to use and apply their phonics every time they are reading and writing and the teachers will model how to do this whenever they write.

Useful websites:http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/home/reading-owl/

expert-help/phonics-made-easy This is where you can listen to the sounds, register

for free e-books and find many more reading resources.

www.phonicsplay.co.uk Fantastic for interactive games and we use it at

school.

BBC Bitesizehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/zcqqtfr

Woodlands Gameshttp://primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/literacy/index.htm

And don’t forget to use your child’s logon for the BugClub which we subscribe to as a whole school phonicsreading scheme!

Greater emphasis is placed on cross curricular reading.

Topic related reading – find out what your child is studying at school and go to the library or use the internet to research.

Emphasis on whole reading – deriving meaning from texts (beyond decoding to higher order skills) and on reading for pleasure.

Year 2 Spelling and Grammar Test (2016) – formal work on spelling, grammar and punctuation is taught during reading and writing.

What is reading comprehension and how can youhelp fluent readers?

Predicting Clarifying Questioning Summarising

Activity Time!!

Predicting involves previewing the text to anticipatewhat may happen next. This may begin with lookingat pictures and thinking what the book might be about or telling their own story using the pictures.

Readers can use the information from the text andtheir prior knowledge to make logical predictions before and during reading.

Although children can be taught to identify difficult words and work through them, it is much more difficult for some to recognise unclear sentences, passages, chapters or ideas.

Clarifying helps children to monitor their own understanding and identify any problems in comprehending portions of the text.

Good readers ask questions throughout the reading process but formulating questions is a difficult and complex task.

Ask your child to think up some questions for you toanswer. These could start with questions about themain characters or ideas or some inferencequestions – can they catch you out?

To summarise effectively children must recall and arrange in order only the important events in a text.

Summarising helps readers to construct an overall understanding of a text, story, chapter or paragraph.

Talk about the book: before reading, whilst reading, and after reading.

Please comment on how your child has read in their reading record book – your support really helps us!

Word games e.g. Scrabble, Boggle, Hangman. BBC Bitesize. Audio CDs.

For early readers, daily reading practice at home is vital.

Reading from child’s reading scheme book is important for progress.

All children start at different levels and will learn at different rates but your interest in their progress is pivotal to their motivation.

We encourage children to read a range of different library books at home for variation including poems, non-fiction and comics.

It is also beneficial to read a range of books to your children to immerse them in different language and vocabulary. It is of great benefit to read to your child from a book that is at a higher level than their own reading ability.

The breadth of their reading helps them develop their speaking skills which also plays a key role in their ability to progress well with their writing.

Does anybody have any questions?