This evenings meeting is an opportunity to explain in a little more detail how we teach Phonics to your child. We also want to give you ideas for how you can further support your child at home in developing their phonic and reading skills.

As a parent myself I found the term ‘Phonics’ a little confusing when my son started school. I wanted to know how I could support him more at home to become a better reader and writer. Hopefully this evening will help you feel more confident in how you can support your child and understand how we teach Phonics in school .

At Our Lady of Grace Primary school we believe that the teaching of Phonics is vital in order for children to become competent readers and writers. We have high expectations of all children and aim to ensure that each child has a firm foundation on which to build their reading skills.We firmly believe; ‘The most important gift our school can give to a child, is the power to read,’ and so the teaching of phonics is considered of paramount importance.

Words are made up from small units of sound called ‘phonemes’.

Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words. Phonics is key to both reading and writing..

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•ate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word ‘blending’ to read.

•Children have a phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons.

•There are around 40 different sounds.

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Children need to be able to hear and distinguish individual sounds within a word.

They need to be able to speak clearly to create the sounds for themselves. This helps to avoid confusion between similar sounds. For instance, ‘th’ and ‘f’ are not the same sound! ‘I have a fat thumb and a thin finger’In Reception your child will have learnt the letter names and the sounds they make. When your child knows their first letters and sounds well, they are ready to read simple words. This involves the key skills of sounding out and blending: point to each letter to say its sound in turn, then say the sounds together to make the word- M A T = Mat

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•ate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word ‘blending’ to read.

•Children have a phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons.

•There are around 40 different sounds.

Phoneme- the sound the letters make

Grapheme- how the sound is written.

Digraph- 2 letters making one sound - ai, ee, or, oi

soil

Trigraph- 3 letters making one sound

Night

Split digraphs- 2 vowels with a consonant in between.

cake a-e

Blending for reading. Merging phonemes together to pronounce a word. In order to read an unfamiliar word, a child must link a phoneme to each letter or letter group in a word and then merge them together to say the word. (Phoneme fingers/robot arms)

•http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/the-alphablocks-guide-to-phonics

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•ate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word ‘blending’ to read.

•Children have a phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons.

•There are around 40 different sounds.

We teach Phonics in Phases:

Phase 1 is taught in Nursery. Phase 2 is introduced in the summer term.

Phase 2, 3 and 4 are taught in Reception

Phase 5 is taught in Year 1

Phase 6 is taught in Year 2

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•ate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word ‘blending’ to read.

•Children have a phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons.

•There are around 40 different sounds.

Phase 3 sound matPhase 3 sound mat

•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSYdCzsoqXA

•

•ate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word ‘blending’ to read.

•Children have a phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons.

•There are around 40 different sounds.

Phase 5 sound mat

In phase 5 the children learn that sometimes there are different ways of writing the same sound.

ai (Phase 3)ay (phase 5)These digraphs both make the same sound put we write them differently

Rain play We look at where the digraph is in the word to help the children

•

•ate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word ‘blending’ to read.

•Children have a phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons.

•There are around 40 different sounds.

 Reception- Year 2 Phonics is taught daily and at a brisk pace. Lessons are 15-20minutes in length and take place during the morning session at 11am, following on from playtime.

 

Phonic lessons follow Lessons all follow this same approach:

Introduce - The learning objective is shared with the children.Revisit - Tackle any areas of previous learning that assessments have shown to need more work. Teach - Explicitly teach the phoneme/grapheme or skill identified in the learning objective. Practice - Play games to rehearse the new learning as many times as possible. Apply – Read and write sentences that involve the new learning.

The aim of this method is to ensure progression is made by each child and effective and high quality teaching takes place.

The children love playing interactive games and the Phonics Play games can also be played at home.Lets have a look at some of the games we play:

Phonics play http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/PicnicOnPluto.html

Every Year 1 child in the country will be taking the phonics screening check in the same week in June.

The phonics screening check is designed to confirm whether pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It will identify pupils who need extra help to improve their decoding skills.

Before the checks take place there will be an opportunity for a number of practice checks. These practice checks are informal and treated as a fun activity to allow the children an opportunity to become familiar with the phonic screening check. We want children to feel at ease and comfortable and therefore want to ensure a 'fun' approach is taken when assessing children

The check is very similar to tasks the children already complete during phonics lessons.

Children will be asked to ‘sound out’ a word and blend the sounds together.eg d-o-g - dog

The focus of the check is to see which sounds the children know and therefore the children will be asked to read made up ‘nonsense’ words.

THIS IS NOT A READING TEST

We will inform you of whether your child has passed the check or if they have not met the required pass rate. Results will be reported home in July with your child’s summer report.

If your child does fall below the expected standard, they will re-take the phonics screening check in Year 2. They will be supported in school through intervention group work.

REMEMBER: Phonics is not the only thing needed to become a fluent reader.

Please continue to read with your child every night and encourage them to:

• Sound out

• Re-read to check it makes sense.

• Use pictures for clues.

• Ask questions about the book.

• And most importantly ENJOY READING!

Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when reading or writing. Focusing particularly on spotting more unusual sound patterns.

Like we mentioned earlier-E.g.

Digraph- 2 letters making one sound

cow

Trigraphs- 3 letters making one sound

night

Split digraphs- 2 vowels with a consonant inbetween.

spine - i-e

Please take the pack of hand-outs home with you to use with your child.

There is a list of suggested websites to use with your child at home.

Children can practise their phonics by playing games online.

•http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/BuriedTreasure2.html