Welcome

Phonics Workshop for parents

Introductions

Phonics structure

• Broken down into ‘phases’.• Most children are between Phase 2 and 5,

however some children are working on Phase 1. • When children have achieved Phase 5 they

move onto a different spelling programme.

Grapheme and phoneme• A phoneme is a sound. When

we teach reading we teach children which letters represent those sounds.

• For example – the word ‘hat’ has 3 phonemes – ‘h’ ‘a’ and ‘t’.

• Chop also has 3 phonemes ‘ch’ ‘o’ ‘p’

• Zooming has 5 phonemes ‘z’ ‘oo’ ‘m’ ‘i’ ‘ng’

• A grapheme is a letter or a number of letters that represent the sounds in our speech. So a grapheme will be the letter/ letters that represent a phoneme.

• 1 letter grapheme – m a t (m)• 2 letter grapheme – sh i p (sh)• 3 letter grapheme- n igh t (igh)• 4 letter grapheme- eigh t (eigh)

Phase 1Concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for

the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. • Raise children’s awareness of the sounds around them.• Develop their listening skills e.g. listening walk, comparing the sounds of different

instruments, making shakers, playing instruments alongside a story, making loud and quiet sounds, listening to music

• Singing songs and action rhymes• Develops children’s appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech e.g.

clapping out syllables, rhyming bingo, rhyming stories.• Begin focussing children on the initial sounds of words e.g. I –spy, matching objects which

begin with the same sound.• Begin oral segmenting. E.g. feed an object into a robot’s mouth and teacher sounds out the

name of the object in a robot’s voice c/u/p. Children to do the same.• Begin oral blending. Teacher would say c/u/p and see if children could pick out a cup from a

range of objects.

The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Phase 2

• In Phase 2, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time. Sounds are taught in the following sequence:

Set 1: s, a, t, pSet 2: i, n, m, dSet 3: g, o, c, kSet 4: ck, e, u, rSet 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

Phase 3

• By the time they reach Phase 3, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 letters taught in Phase 2.

• Set 6: j, v, w, x• Set 7: y, z, zz, qu• Consonant

digraphs:  ch, sh, th, ng• Vowel digraphs:  ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

Phase 4

• In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced. The main aim of this phase is to consolidate the children's knowledge.

• Children learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants, such as trap, string, flask and milk.

Phase 5

• 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.

Support for Spelling Programme

The Year 2 learning objectives are:• Spell with increasing accuracy and confidence,

and spelling patterns, including common suffixes (-d, -ed, -ied, -s) and use of double letters (hop- hopped).

• Spell compound words e.g hair-brush, foot-ball• Read and spell less common alternative sounds

High frequency words/ Keywords

• In each phase high frequency words and ‘tricky’ words will also be taught. These are included in our spellings.• Expected to read them on sight.e.g. said, have, one, when, what, are, children, were, there.• Keywords to be sent out this week.

Structure of a phonics lesson

• Revisit and review• Teach• Practise• Apply

• Recap sounds learned so far.• Teach new sound.• Children will practise writing the sound-

handwriting, forming the letters correctly.• Brainstorming words that include the sound.• Reading words that contain the sound.• Writing words that contain the sounds.• Writing a sentence with words that contain the

sound.

A typical phonics lesson

Jolly Phonics

• It is brilliant for all children, as it is multisensory. Therefore it suits all learning styles (auditory, kinaesthetic and visual learners).

• Each phoneme/ sound has an action and picture. Therefore children are hearing it, seeing it and doing it.

• See Jolly Phonics website for all the actions, how to pronounce the sounds and more information.

www.jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

Making phonics fun!

• Using games on the Interactive Whiteboard• Games• Songs and actions• Objects• Puppets• DVD clips• Flashcards• Visual aids

Grouping

We group the children for phonics.This allows:• smaller groups with higher staff to child ratio.• focussed teaching at their own level.• Staff can monitor and assess children more easily due

to the smaller groups.• Children to enjoy their lessons more and gain higher

self esteem. This motivates children to learn and improve the children’s literacy skills and enjoyment of literacy.

How do we decide which group your child belongs in?

All children are regularly assessed.

We check: • The children’s knowledge of sounds• If they can segment words • If they can blend sounds together• If they can read non-words e.g. zoot

How does it work?

• All staff in Reception/ KS1 are trained to teach phonics.

• Every day at 10.20am all children go to their phonics group for a 20 minute lesson.

Phonics Homework

• Children will not be given spellings until they are confident to recognise all single letter sounds and phase 3 digraphs (ch, ee etc.).

• They will be given a sheet asking them to write the focus sound, read words containing the sound and look for objects that contain that sound.

• This will focus on one of the sounds that your child has covered in phonics during the week.

Spellings

• On Friday each member of staff prepares a Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check sheet for their group to take home.

• The words will contain the sounds that the children will be learning during the following week’s phonic lessons and some high frequency/ tricky words. (Children working at Phase 2 will receive sounds, rather than words to begin with).

• The children will have at least 5 words to learn.

Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check

• Children need to complete this process at home at least 5 times a week.

Spelling tests

• Staff will test the children on their spellings on a Friday morning, during phonics.

• Staff will write how many they got correct in the corner of their new Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check sheet that is sent home in their spelling folder.

Helping your child with spellingThere are many strategies that you can use to will help your child become a confident and accurate speller. These include:• sounding words out: breaking the word down into phonemes, for example, c-a-t and sh-e-ll. Many words

cannot be sounded out, so you will need to use other strategies;• dividing the word into syllables, and saying each syllable while writing the word. For example,re-mem-ber;• using the Look, say, cover, write, check strategy:

– Look at the word and say it out aloud, then cover the word, then write it and finally check to see if it is correct. If not, highlight or underline the incorrect part and repeat the process;

• using mnemonics to help memorise tricky words. For example, people: people eat orange peel like elephants, and could: O U Lucky Duck.

• finding words within words. For example, rat in separate;• making links between the meaning of words and their spelling. For example, sign, signal, and signature.

This strategy is used at a later stage than other strategies;• working out spelling rules for themselves. This strategy is used at a later stage than other strategies;• using a dictionary as soon as they know how to.

Encourage your child to have a go at spelling words they are unsure of. This will give them the opportunity to try out spelling strategies and to identify those that they find useful. You can help them to use the strategies outlined above and praise their efforts.

Monitoring and assessment

• At the end of each term staff will assess the children in their group.

• Staff in Reception/ KS1 will have a meeting to discuss if any children need to change groups, according to the assessments that they have done.

Saying each sound correctly

• Vital that parents pronounce each sound correctly.

• http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=pronouncing+each+phoneme&qs=n&form=QBVR&pq=pronouncing+each+phoneme&sc=0-14&sp=-1&sk=#view=detail&mid=458678162690736D6CAF458678162690736D6CAF

Any Questions

How do we teach reading and encourage a love of books

• Literacy lessons• Guided reading• Phonics• Independent learning• Story time and library

Helping your child to read

Encourage your child to:• Use their phonics to sound out words, then blend

the sounds together• Use the pictures to give them clues• Split the word into chunks• Read the rest of the sentence and then see if they

can work out what the word is (context).• Children need to have a range of strategies to use,

to help them read unfamiliar words.

Reading Scheme

• Different coloured book bands• Each reading level matches a colour• Children will begin this after half-term• Book changing will be twice a week

What do I need to do at home?

Children need to share and read the book lots of times before they change it. • First they need to look at all the pictures and talk

about the book• Then sound out and read the words• Read the book again because they will gain confidence,

fluency and understanding, as they will be able to read it more easily the second time

• Answer questions about the story or discuss what has happened. Did they enjoy the book?

Any questions?