Phonics Workshop for Supporting

Parents with Early Reading.

Supporting your child with phonics and reading

Miss Marshall

Mrs Mackenzie

8th November 2017

Purpose:

To understand the importance of phonics.

To get an idea of how phonics is taught in

school.

To understand the progression through

phonic phases and how to support and develop

children’s learning.

What you can do at home to support your

child.

To support your child with passing the phonics

screening test.

Why Phonics?

The aim is to secure essential phonics knowledge and skills so that children can progress quickly to independent reading and writing.

Reading and writing are like a code: phonics is teaching the child to crack the code.

Gives us the skills of blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

High quality phonics work…

Interactive multi-sensory phonic session at their own level.

A session led by a member of staff of shared reading and/or shared writing.

Opportunities for independent reading and writing.

Pace and progression is key.

Technical vocabulary

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. A

phoneme may be represented by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters.

E.g. t ai igh

A grapheme is the letter(s) representing a phoneme.

A syllable is a word or part of a word that contains one

vowel sound. E.g. hap/pen bas/ket let/ter

Technical vocabulary

A digraph is two letters, which make one sound.◦ A consonant digraph contains two consonants

sh th ck ll

◦ A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel

ai ee ar oy

A split digraph is a digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent (e.g. make)

A trigraph is three letters, which make one sound. E.g. igh air

Technical vocabulary

Oral Blending – hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a spoken word (no text is used) for example, when a teacher calls out ‘b-u-s’, the children say bus.

Blending – recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.

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

Phase 1 - ongoing

To develop language and increase vocabulary through

speaking and listening activities.

To develop phonological awareness.

To distinguish between sounds.

To speak clearly and audibly with confidence and control.

To become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration.

Use sound talk to segment words into phonemes.

Example activities - listening walks, Silly Soup, rhyming

chants/songs,

Phase 2 – Up to 6 weeks

To introduce grapheme-phoneme correspondences

Children know that words are constructed from phonemes

and that phonemes are represented by graphemes.

They have knowledge of a small selection of common

consonants and vowels – only 19!

They blend them together in reading simple CVC words

and segment them to support spelling. – use of magnetic

letters!

Phase 2

Letter Progression (one set a week)

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 s

Correct Articulation of phonemes is

essential!

Pronunciation - not ‘uh’ on the end – use

soft voice!

Video –Articulation of Sounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW

_v-1s

Articulation

Long oo

spoon

moon

balloon

smoothie

Soft Sound

think

thin

thick

thumb

Short oo

cook

book

look

hook

Spoken Sound

the

that

there

this

This is one reason

why the English

Language is tricky!

Children won’t grasp

this overnight or by

osmosis…they need

to be immersed in an

awareness of

language throughout

the day.

Tricky Words

Words that can’t be sounded out.

E.g. the, said, me, my, to, go, was

Phase 3 – Up to 12 weeks

To teach children one grapheme for each of the 44

phonemes in order to read and spell simple regular

words.

Naming and sounding letters of the alphabet.

Recognise letter shapes and say a sound for each

Hear and say sounds in the order in which they

occur, and read simple words by sounding out and

blending.

Recognise common digraphs and read some high

frequency words.

Phase 4 – (4-6 weeks)

To teach children to read and spell words containing

adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.

Teaching should focus on the skills of blending and

segmenting words containing adjacent consonants.

They should not be taught in word families such as

spot, spit, spin as the children will treat ‘sp’ as one unit.

Phase 4

Children now have the ability to blend and segment

therefore they are moving beyond simple cvc words to cvcc,

ccvc, ccvcc and cccvc.

b l a ck s t r o ng

c c v c c c c v c

f e l t b l a n k

c v c c c c v c c

Phase 5

To teach children to recognise and use alternative

ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the

phonemes already taught.

Teaching the long vowel phonemes

Read and spell phonetically decodable 2/3 syllable words e.g. bleating, frogspawn,

shopkeeper.

Choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes when spelling words.

Recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically.

Spelling complex words using phonetically plausible attempts

ai a-e ay

Seeing themselves as writers!

Year 1 Phonics Screening

A screening check for year one to encourage schools to

pursue a rigourous phonics programme.

Aimed at identifying the children who need extra help

are given the support.

Assesses decoding skills using phonics

40 items to be read (20 real words, 20 pseudo words)

If children do not pass in Year 1 they have to retake the

test at the end of Year 2.

What does it look like?

Year 1 Phonics Test

Tracking and Progress

Children are assessed at the end of each term to ensure

understanding and good progression.

Children are assessed against a progress tracking grid.

Children move teaching groups to accommodate their

need and ability.

End of phase progress checks/mock phonics test.

Year 1 Phonics screening check.

How can I help? - Reading Books

Your child will have the opportunity to

bring home a reading book each day. Talk

about the book, the character, what is

happening in the story, predict what may

happen next. Encourage a love of reading

– not a chore!

What else can I do at home?

Ask your child to find items around the house that

represent particular sounds, i.e. ‘oo’ - ‘spoon’ ‘bedroom’

Play matching pairs – with key words or individual

sounds/pictures.

Key words on the stairs

Play tricky word bingo

Flashcard letters and words – how quickly can they read

them?

Notice words/letters in the environment.

Go on a listening walk around the house/when out and

about.

Lots of activities online for children to practice their

phonic knowledge.

Phonics games websites

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com

http://www.ictgames.com

www.phonicsplay.co.uk