Letters and Sounds Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics

1. Letters and SoundsPrinciples and Practice of High Quality Phonics RB

2. Agenda • 10:00: Setting the Scene • 10.45: Principles of High Quality Phonics • 11:30 Refreshments • 12.00: Introducing ‘Letters and Sounds’ • 1.15 Lunch • 2.15: Presentation from Educational Publishers • Phonic Fair including refreshments • 16:00 Close

3. Aims of the day • To inform Headteachers about the National Strategy resource: Letters and Sounds • To enable Headteachers to make an informed decision about which phonics programme best suits their needs and local contexts

4. Setting the Scene • The Early Years Foundation Stage • The Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading • The Primary Framework

5. The Early Years Foundation Stage An overview

6. The Early Years Foundation Stage • Legislation in the Childcare Act • From birth to the end of the Foundation Stage • An integrated approach to care and education • A principled play-based approach • Strengthens the links between Birth to Three Matters and the Foundation Stage

7. The EYFS: • Incorporates elements of the National Standards • Ensures a consistent approach to care, learning and development from birth to the end of the Foundation Stage • Helps practitioners plan care and learning that is right for each child at each stage of their development • Statutory framework, Practice Guidance, Cards, Poster and CD Rom

8. Aim of the EYFS The overarching aim of the EYFS is to help young children achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes: • Be healthy; • Stay safe; • Enjoy and achieve; • Make a positive contribution and • Achieve economic well-being.

9. Achieving the aim The EYFS will achieve this aim by a principled approach to: • Setting standards • Promoting equality of opportunity • Creating a framework for partnership working • Improving quality and consistency • Laying a secure foundation for future learning and development

10. Independent Review of the teaching of Early Reading Recommendations

11. Recommendations • More attention needs to be given to speaking and listening from the outset • High quality, systematic phonic work should be taught discretely and daily and in line with the definition of high quality phonic work as set out in the Rose report • Phonics should be set within a broad and rich language curriculum that takes full account of developing the four interdependent strands of language • For most children phonics teaching should start by the age of five, subject to the professional judgement of teachers and practitioners

12. Recommendations • The EYFS and the renewed literacy framework must be compatible with each other and make sure that expectations about continuity and progression in phonic work are expressed explicitly in the new guidance • The searchlights model should be reconstructed to take full account of word recognition and language comprehension as distinct processes related one to the other.

13. Recommendations • HTs and managers of settings should give phonic work appropriate priority and reflect this in their decision making • At least one member of staff is fully able to lead on literacy • Monitoring arrangements should assure the quality and consistency of phonic work • High quality teaching of reading in KS1 should inform target setting for English at KS2

14. Renewed framework • Learning objectives under twelve strands • Explicit inclusion of speaking and listening objectives within the renewed framework • Stronger emphasis on building learning over time and developing the teaching sequence • Adjustment of expectations particularly around phonics learning and teaching • Closer focus on assessment for learning

15. Discussion • What are the key features of a broad and rich language curriculum? • In your role, consider how you monitor and support the development of such provision

16. Session 2 Principles of High Quality Phonics

17. The Simple View of Reading • Word-level reading and language comprehension are both necessary to reading • Neither is sufficient on its own • This is formalised in “The Simple View of Reading” • Reading comprehension is a product of word recognition and language comprehension

18. Clear distinction between processes There is now considerable evidence to support the need for a clear distinction between: • processes concerned with recognising the printed words that comprise the written text and … • processes that enable the reader to understand the messages contained in the text

19. + - + Word recognition - Language comprehension Language comprehension

20. + Word Recognition Good language comprehension, poor word recognition Good word recognition, good language comprehension - + Good word recognition, poor language comprehension Poor word recognition, poor language comprehension - Language comprehension

21. + Word Recognition - + Word recognition vv v - Language comprehension Language comprehension

22. Implications for teaching • Teachers need to be aware that different skills and abilities contribute to development of word recognition skills from those that contribute to comprehension • Teachers need therefore to keep these two dimensions of reading separate in their minds when they plan their teaching

23. So that…. • they focus clearly on developing word recognition skills through Phoneme awareness and phonics teaching Repetition and teaching of ‘tricky’ words • and they focus clearly on developing language comprehension through Talking with children Reading to children Teaching comprehension strategies

24. Core criteria which define an effective phonic programme • present high quality systematic phonic work as the prime approach to decoding print • enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills systematically by the age of five with the expectation that they will be fluent readers having secured word recognition skills by the end of key stage one • be designed for the teaching of discrete, daily sessions progressing from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and skills and covering the major grapheme phoneme correspondences

25. Criteria for assuring high quality phonic work • enable children's progress to be assessed • use a multi-sensory approach so that children learn variously from simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities which are designed to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills • demonstrate that phonemes should be blended, in order, from left to right, 'all through the word' for reading • demonstrate how words can be segmented into their constituent phonemes for spelling and that this is the reverse of blending phonemes to read words 

26. Criteria for assuring high quality phonic work • ensure children apply phonic knowledge and skills as their first approach to reading and spelling even if a word is not completely phonically regular • ensure that children are taught high frequency words that do not conform completely to grapheme/phoneme correspondence rules • ensure that, as early as possible, children have opportunities to read texts (and spell words) that are within the reach of their phonic knowledge and skills even though every single word in the text may not be entirely decodable by the children unaided

27. Criteria for assuring high quality phonic work www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/phonics

28. Quality First Phonic Teaching should: • Adhere to four key principles of high quality phonic work as defined by Rose review • Use phonics as the prime approach for tackling unfamiliar words • Engage all children and be fully participatory • Demonstrate correct enunciation of phonemes • Include both blending and segmenting

29. Quality First Phonic teaching should: • Be multi-sensory but tightly focused on the learning goal • Ensure that all children can hear/see the teaching input • Support progression in learning and consolidation • Make full use of additional adults • Be sufficiently flexible to take account of differing needs • Achieve the learning intention within the optimum time

30. Communication, Language and Literacy Development An overview of the National Strategy programme

31. Taking forward the Rose recommendations • Fifty Local Authorities with funded Early Reading Consultant • Targeted work in identified schools and linked settings • Consultant support for schools and settings • Visits and Cluster meetings • Tracking children’s progress through phonic phases and in CLL and PSED

32. CLLD: Resources • Materials for Consultants • Material for Practitioners • Collection and use of data • CLLD website: www.dfes.standards.gov.uk/clld

33. Expectations for schools supported through the CLLD programme At least 80% children in the programme’s schools leave YR in July: • having achieved Phase 3 • reading and writing confidently and independently • maintaining secure attainment in PSED

34. Discussion • For Headteachers, discuss how children’s progress in your school compares to these expectations • For LAs, compare the picture of children’s achievement in Linking Sounds and Letters in your LA with these expectations • For both, discuss ways in which children’s progress in phonics might be accelerated in the context of a broad and rich language curriculum.

35. Session 3 Introducing ‘Letters and Sounds’

36. Letters and Sounds:The new phonics resource • Developed by independent experts in partnership with the PNS • Meets criteria for high quality phonic work • Notes of Guidance • Six phase teaching programme • DVD • CLLD website

37. Letters and Sounds-some key messages • The importance of flexibility • Making a good start – Phase One • Systematic high quality phonics – Phase 2 and beyond • Multi-sensory learning • Fidelity to the programme

38. The role of Phase 1 • Central importance of developing speaking and listening skills • Relies on and complements a broad and rich language curriculum • Promotes the range and depth of children’s language experience • Introduces oral blending and segmenting • Paves the way for systematic phonic teaching to begin

39. Phase 1 • Seven Aspects: Three Strands in each • Introduces oral blending and segmenting in Aspect 7 • Adult-led activities • Illustrated freely chosen activities • Continues well beyond introduction of Phase 2

40. Phase 2 • introduces 19 grapheme-phoneme correspondences • Decoding and encoding taught as reversible processes • As soon as children have a small number of grapheme/phoneme correspondences, blending and segmenting can start ( /s/a/t/p/i/n/) • ‘Tricky’ words Typical duration: Up to 6 weeks

41. Phase 3 • Introduces another 25 graphemes • Most comprising two letters • One representation of each of 43 phonemes • Reading and spelling two syllable words and captions • Typical duration: Up to 12 weeks

42. Phase 4 • Consolidates knowledge of GPCs • Introduces adjacent consonants • No new GPCs • Typical duration: 4-6 weeks

43. Phase 5 • Introduces additional graphemes • Introduces alternative pronunciations for reading • Introduces alternative graphemes for spelling • Developing automaticity • Throughout Year One

44. Phase 6 • Increasing fluency and accuracy • Throughout Year Two (although teaching of spelling continues well into KS2)

45. Website • www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/clld