Letters, Sounds and Reading

1. Letters, Sounds and Reading • Phonics , Reading and Comprehension Grazeley Parochial Primary School

2. This Open Morning aims to… • To provide information about how your child is learning phonics and reading. • To learn how you can help your child to further develop their reading skills. • To ask any questions about phonics, reading, comprehension and assessment.

3. What is phonics ? • Phonics teaching involves teaching children the sounds of letters ( not just the names) and how to segment and blend them together to make words , e.g. c - a - t can be blended to make cat.

4. Phonics consists of : • Identifying sounds in spoken words, e.g. sat, pin. • Recognising the common spelling of each phoneme, e.g. sh, ay. • Blending words into phonemes for reading, e.g. ship. • Segmenting words into phonemes for spelling, e.g. sh-i-p.

5. How it works .. • At Grazeley, the Letters and Sounds Scheme is implemented in Foundation and Key Stage One. • TRACKS and Support for Spelling are used in Key Stage Two. • Children are grouped according to individual needs and work in different areas of the school with Teachers and Teacher Assistants.

6. Letters and Sounds Phases • Phonics and reading skills are taught in six distinct phases. • These phases are set out in the Letters and Sounds Scheme. • Phases are taught sequentially.

7. Useful definitions • PHONEME - smallest unit of sound. • GRAPHEME - written representation of the sound. • DIGRAPH - two letters making one sound, e.g. ee. • TRIGRAPH - three letters making one sound, e.g. igh. • QUADGRAPH - four letters making one sound, e.g. eigh. • SPLIT DIGRAPH - where two letters are not adjacent, e.g. a-e as in have.

8. Overview of Phases • Phase 1 : Rhyming , keeping rhythms and start to relate letter sounds to words, e.g. b is for bag. • Phase 2 : Learn initial letters sounds and build 3 letters words. • Phase 3 : Learn all 44 phonemes and blend sounds together to read words. • Phase 4 : Blend consonants together to read difficult words, e.g. blue, grab. • Phase 5 : Learn how to spell letter sounds in more than one way, e.g. rain, day, make. • Phase 6 : Learn how to spell word specific spelling, e.g. turned , beautiful.

9. Sequence of each session • 1. RECALL - Revisit and review previous sound and word building. • 2. TEACH - A new phonic skill. • 3. PRACTISE - the new skill. • 4. APPLY - in a new situation, e.g. reading or writing in a sentence.

10. How you can help at home • Encourage and model correct pronunciation of sounds. • Reading daily to your child OR with your child OR listen to them read. • Encourage sounding out as one strategy when they are having trouble reading a word. • PRAISE all attempts!

11. Things that you could notice as you read together • Synonyms-words with the same or similar meanings, e.g. synonyms for said are yelled, screeched, whispered, replied. • Antonyms-a word which has the opposite meaning to a given word, e.g. antonyms for cold are hot, warm, humid, fiery and balmy.

12. Reading Progress

13. Questions you can ask

14. What your children think about their reading… • I feel alone and isolated when I read. Molly • It feels like you are submerged in a book. Ben • It is a quiet time to listen and build pictures in my head. Charlie

15. What your children think about their reading… • Some books you can’t wait to get to the end but some books you don’t want to get to the end. Emily • It is discouraging at the bottom and I need to be brave – it seems too big. Milly • There are sometimes scary parts, but it works out in the end. Charlotte T.

16. What your children think about their reading… • When I finish I feel like I am out of breath and amazing. Daniel B. • Every chapter is like a mile. Isaac • When I read a tricky book, I am getting better and better at reading. Jude

17. What your children think about their reading… • You don’t know what’s going to happen next. Aiden, Maddie and Archie W. • It can be mysterious and exhilarating. Archie A. • Sometimes you find tricky words. Olivia D.

18. How reading can be used to help writing • Notice a favourite author’s style. • What does the author do to grab your attention. • Begin to ‘borrow’ great ideas from books read, it is what all good authors do. • Notice VCOP: Vocabulary, connectives, openings and punctuation.

19. The cat went along the wall.

20. Let’s get the VCOP superheroes to work on saving us from the boredom of boring sentences!

21. The cat went along the wall. Violet vocab adds adjectives to describe and changes dull words for interesting alternatives! The fluffy ginger cat prowled along the red brick wall.

22. The fluffy ginger cat prowled along the red brick wall. Captain Connective adds more detail or action to the sentence. The fluffy ginger cat prowled along the red brick wall because he was spying on a juicy bird.

23. The fluffy ginger cat prowled along the red brick wall because he was spying on a juicy bird. The Incredible Opener changes the beginning of the sentence to grab your reader’s attention! Whilst licking his lips, the fluffy ginger cat prowled along the red brick wall because he was spying on a juicy bird.

24. Whilst licking his lips, the fluffy ginger cat prowled along the red brick wall because he was spying on a juicy bird. Dr Punctuation makes an impact using different punctuation. Whilst licking his lips, the fluffy ginger cat (who had sharp teeth) prowled along the red brick wall because he was spying on a juicy bird!

25. The cat went along the wall. We went from: To: Whilst licking his lips, the fluffy ginger cat (who had sharp teeth) prowled along the red brick wall because he was spying on a juicy bird!