Letters and Sounds

Workshop for parents – September 2012

a b c d e f g h I j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z qu ch sh th ue ng ai eeie oa oo ar or er ou oi ear air ure

What is Letters and Sounds?

Letters and Sounds is the way we teach phonics skills at Walter Evans as recommended by the Rose Report - a government report on the teaching and learning of children in primary. All children have a daily 15-20 minutes session of phonics teaching to enable them to learn to read and spell words for themselves. It is a six phase programme.

We begin teaching Letters and Sounds in nursery (FS1) – Phase 1. This may involves joining in with rhymes, songs, stories by clapping, stamping etc. Over time, children develop an understanding that words are made up of different sounds (phonemes) and they learn to hear different sounds. Gradually, they will learn to match sounds to letters (graphemes). This is phonic knowledge – they use this when they are reading and writing.

In phase 2 and 3 (FS2) children learn to blend and segment different sounds. They learn the letter name and the sound it makes and its formation.

By the time they are in year 1 and 2, the children are expected to know by heart all the 44 phonemes (sounds) and to spell them with increasing accuracy. (phases 4-6)

Some examples:

Phonics is….. Identifying phonemes as the smallest unit

of sound in a word, being able to articulate each one correctly and then learning the corresponding grapheme for each of them!

A phoneme is spoken. A grapheme is written.

Blending phonemes

• Blending phonemes into words for reading

• Recognising the letter sounds in a written word e.g. c-u-p, sh-ee-p and merging them into the correct order to pronounce the word “cup” and “sheep”

Segmenting Phonemes

Segmenting phonemes into words for spelling by identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word, starting with simple CVC words (eg c a t) and writing down letters for each sound (phoneme) to form the word.

Other terminology we use with the children

• Digraph – where 2 letters make one soundeg aw, or, ch, sh

• Trigraph – 3 letters make one sound eg igh, air.

• Split-digraph – two letters that make a sound are split up by another sound eg ate, polite.

Year 1 and 2

• revision of phase 3-4 and the introduction of phases 5 to 6.

• Consolidation of graphemes to represent each phoneme (unit of sound).

• Using Frequency Words and Tricky Words• Introducing alternative graphemes for spellings i.e. may,

make, pain, grey, neigh• Introduces alternate pronunciations for reading – i.e.

mean, bread, break• Past and present tense• Introduction of prefixes and suffixes – this continues into

phase 6 (year 3)

Typical activities

Identify (show me on your fingers) how many phonemes in these words:

bleedflopcowjumperchairpencil

Buried Treasure

There are many online games that your children can play at home. There is a list of useful websites on one of the handouts. This is one of them.

buried treasure

• Phonics is the step up to word recognition.

• Automatic reading and spelling of ALL words is the ULTIMATE GOAL!

Useful websites:

www.lettersandsounds.com

www.getreadingright.com

www.bigbrownbear.co.uk

www.starfall.com

www.yourchildlearns.com

www.ictgames.com/literacy.html

www.coxhoe.durham.sch.uk/curriculum/literacy.htm

www.foniks.org

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

Typical activities

I have set out a range of typical activities we might use with the children so you can have some first hand experience – don’t worry we’re not judging your performance – we try to make them fun!

• Phase• Phonic Knowledge and Skills• Phase One (Nursery/Reception)Activities are divided into seven aspects, including

environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeksLearning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions.Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeksThe remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language.Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeksNo new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segent longer words with adjacet consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.Phase Five (Throughout Year 1)Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.Phase Six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond)Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.