Spring 2021

A guide to

and how it is taught in Reception

at

Rattlesden C of E Primary Academy

PHONICS GLOSSARY

Phoneme        –  The smallest unit of sound.

Grapheme      –  The way we write the sound.

Digraph          –  Is a grapheme containing 2 letter shapes which make one sound.  For example – sh, ch, th

Trigraph         –  Is a grapheme containing 3 letter shapes which make one sound.  For example – ear, igh, air

Split digraph –  Is 2 letters that make one sound but they have been split up by a letter in between them.

                                For example  a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e

Blending         –  Looking at each grapheme in a word and blending the sounds together to read the word.

Segmenting   –   Hearing a spoken word and splitting it into the phonemes that make it to spell the word.

Tricky Words – Some words cannot be sounded out or spelt correctly by listening for the sounds in them.  These are called Tricky Words and have to be learnt and remembered as whole words.  This is achieved through regular practise of reading and spelling such words and also by identifying which part of the word is ‘tricky’.

Alien Words   – Also known as ‘Nonsense Words’ are words which are not real.  By regularly looking at these kinds of words the children acquire a growing confidence in their ability to decode unfamiliar text.  This is achieved by identifying any known graphemes within the word and then blending the sounds all through the word and merging them together to read it.  It also gives us a clear idea of any children who may need extra help with grapheme recognition and blending skills.

Sound buttons   – A way of helping children identify the graphemes in written words. A dot is placed under a single letter and a dash under a digraph or trigraph. Split digraphs are shown by a curved dash, like a smile, to link the vowel and e.

Phoneme frames   – To help children at the early stage of writing they may be given a frame to write each sound in e.g.

sh

i

p

When each phase is taught in Willow Class

Autumn 1

Autumn 2

Spring 1

Spring 2

Summer 1

Summer 2

Phase 1 and introduction to Phase 2

Phase 2

Revision of Phase 2 then Phase 3

Phase 3

Phase 4

Revision

Phonics is taught daily in 20 minute sessions plus small group work tailored at their level. Children sometimes need extra support with blending, recognising sounds or letter formation.

Phase 1

Aspect 1 – General sound discrimination – environmental

The aim of this aspect is to raise children’s awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested may include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

Aspect 2 – General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds

This aspect aims to develop children’s awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Aspect 3 – General sound discrimination – body percussion

The aim of this aspect is to develop children’s awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Aspect 4 – Rhythm and rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children’s appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Aspect 5 – Alliteration

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Aspect 6 – Voice sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities may include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot’s mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice – /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Aspect 7 – Oral blending and segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

Phase 2 phonics

During Phase 2 letters and their sounds are taught in the following order.

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, ss

As soon as each set of letters has been introduced, children are encouraged to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words.  They can blend the letters s-a-t to read the word sat and similarly will be able to find the letters s, a, t from a small selection of letters when asked to spell the word sat (segmenting).

Tricky words (words which cannot yet be decoded) are also taught: the, to, I, no, go, into

Children become familiar with the High Frequency Words: a, at, as, is, an, in, it, dad, and, can, on, not, got, up, mum, put, get, back, had, it of, off, but, big, him, his.

During this phase we use a multi-sensory approach; children will use real objects to sort by initial letter, they will make letters from dough or trace them in sand, sing songs and play games.

Phase 3 phonics

During Phase 3 a further 26 graphemes are taught:  

Set 6 : j, v, w, x

Set 7: y, z, zz, qu

Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel digraphs/trigraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo/oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi. ear,  air, ure, er

As each new set of sounds is learnt, children will be given lots of opportunities to practise applying them by using their growing knowledge of sounds to blend (for reading) and segment (for spelling) words.

They will also revise Phase 2 sounds regularly during the revisit part of their daily phonics session.

Tricky words (words which cannot yet be decoded) are also taught: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are.

HFW: will, that, this, then, see, with, they, look, too, now, far, down.

Phase 4 phonics

During Phase 4 no new graphemes are introduced.

The main aim of this Phase is to help consolidate the children’s knowledge in learning to read and spell words with adjacent consonants e.g. trap, string, milk, crunch.

As children enter Phase 4 they will already be confident in blending to read and segmenting to spell many CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words such as shut, thin, chat.  *Note* The first two letters in each of these words blend together to make one sound (phoneme) and are therefore counted as one sound which is why they are classed as CVC words.

Learning is focused on the reading and writing of a variety of words, captions and simple sentences using the sounds already learnt in previous phases through the use of games, picture and word cards and other activities which promote the application of knowledge gained so far.

Tricky words (words which cannot yet be decoded) are also taught: said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what.

HFW: went, from, it’s, children, just, help.

How you can help

Play listening games with your child.

Sing nursery rhymes and read poems or stories that have rhythm.

Go through the pink sound book as frequently as you can.

Talk like a robot to your child to help them learn to blend.

Encourage your child to robot speak to you so that they can practise segmenting.

Phonics is only part of what helps children to read. Listening and speaking, reading a bedtime story and going to the library to choose from a wide variety of books, are some of the things that will also help to instil a love of reading, and so often lost nowadays, reading for pleasure.

Useful websites

ictgames || html5 English Games Page A wide variety of games

PhonicsPlay Games

Oxford Owl for School and Home Information and books to read

https://www.starfall.com/h/ltr-classic/ Games

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zcqqtfr BBC Teach Phonics

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

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP_FbjYUP_UtldV2K_-niWw Letters and Sounds Lessons

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sW4j8p7k9D_qRRMUsGqyw Mr Thorne Teaches Phonics with Geraldine the Giraffe