Phonics Training for Parents

1. Phonics Training for Parents October 2019

2. What is phonics? • Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught in helping them to learn to read • Words are made up from small units of sounds called phonemes • Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. e.g c-a-t = cat

3. The Phonic Alphabet • The English language has 44 phonemes • They should be taught to write each letter, forming it accurately. • Children are taught to produce the sounds as shortly as possible, e.g no ‘uh’ on the end of ‘d’ and ‘g’.

4. Enunciation • Sounds should be articulated clearly and precisely - see http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/letter-and-sounds-%E2%80%93-articulation-phonemes-vowels-and-consonants • Stretchy sounds - e.g. ssssss, mmmmmm, llllllll, nnnnnn, shhhhhhh, rrrrrrr, zzzzzzzz, vvvvvvv • Bouncy sounds - e.g. /c/ /t/ /p/ /b/ /d/ /g/ • Unvoiced - /t/, /h/ and /p/ • No schwa-ing! c not “cuh‟

5. Glossary • Phonemes: the smallest units of sound that are found within a word • Grapheme: the spelling of the sound • Digraph: two letters that make one sound when read e.g sh, or, ar • Trigraph: three letters that make one sound e.g igh • CVC: stands for consonant, vowel, consonant e.g cat • Segmenting: breaking up a word into its sounds • Blending : putting the sounds together to read a word • Tricky words: words that cannot easily be decoded e.g the, to, go

6. Letters and Sounds • 6 phases • Phase 1-listening to sounds • Phase 2 and beyond- introducing the phonemes.

7. Phase 1 outcomes: • They may be able to distinguish between speech sounds. • Many - blend and segment orally • Some - recognise words that rhyme and be able to provide a string of rhyming words e.g cat, bat, sat

8. Phase 1:Good listening skills • Tuning into sounds • Listening and remembering sounds • Talking about sounds Music and movement Rhythm and rhyme Sound effects Speaking and listening skills

9. Other teaching techniques • Alphablocks– use the cbeebies website, or BBCiplayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0TDJbQdEUM

10. Letters and Sounds:Phase 2 • 19 phonemes and graphemes • Blend and segment • Tricky words

11. Some simple ‘consonant-vowel-consonant’ (CVC) words:

12. Letters and Sounds: Phase 3 • Next 25 graphemes • Middle vowel phonemes e.g rain will be segmented into r-ai-n .

13. Jolly Phonics • Each sound is supported by a story, a song and an action. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybiJTZNLvTI • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjKq8s8154s

14. Your children will learn to use the term: Blending Children need to be able to hearthe separate sounds in a word and then blend them together to saythe whole word . /b/ /e/ /d/ = bed /t/ /i/ /n/ = tin /m/ /u/ /g/ = mug

15. Your children will learn to use the term: Segmenting Children need to be able toheara whole word and say every sound that they hear. bed = /b/ /e/ /d/ tin = /t/ /i/ /n/ mug = /m/ /u/ /g/

16. How can I help at home? • Oral blending: The Robot Game • Children need to practise hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a word. For example, you say ‘b-u-s’, and your child says ‘bus’. • “What’s in the box?” is a great game for practising this skill.

17. Expectations • Phase 1: majority of children will be confident and achieved this level by the end of Nursery. • Most should leave Reception having achieved Phase 3 • Reading and writing independently • Confident readers and writers

18. Reading • Your child will read at least once a week with an adult at school • You should read each book at least 3 times (Once for decoding; twice for fluency and the third time for comprehension). • Any reading that you do at home should be logged in the reading diary. • In the summer term the children may be given two books to take home, depending on their reading ability.

19. Words • We have a set of the phase 2 and 3 tricky words for you to take home. • Practise with your child regularly as this will aide their reading and writing skills. Try to make this as fun as possible! • Record this in the reading diary. • We incorporate these words into our Phonics sessions.

20. How to help at home • Use the pack we provide with you today- stick the sound mats up on the fridge! • Practise isolated sounds at home – possibly display them on the fridge? • Challenge the children to find objects that begin with a certain sound. • Play ‘I Spy’ with phonemes not letter names. • Practise letter formation. • Play rhyming bingo, lotto and extend rhyming strings. • Play games with word cards. • Make sentences with word cards.

21. Year One Phonics Check • A quick check to see if your child has made the expected progress • A child will sit with a teacher he or she knows and be asked to read 40 words aloud • The child may have read some of the words before, while others will be completely new • The check normally takes just a few minutes to complete and there is no time limit • If a child is struggling, the teacher will stop the check • The check is carefully designed not to be stressful for children

22. What are non-words? • The check will contain a mix of real words and ‘non-words’ (or ‘nonsense words’). The child will be told before the check that there will be non-words that he or she will not have seen before. Many children will be familiar with this because many schools already use ‘non-words’ when they teach phonics. • Non-words are important to include because words such as ‘vap’ or ‘jound’ are new to all children. Children cannot read the non-words by using their memory or vocabulary; they have to use their decoding skills. This is a fair way to assess their ability to decode correctly.

23. Helpful websites: • BBC www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures • The School Run www.theschoolrun.com/what-magic-e • Primary Tools http://primarytools.co.uk/pages/phonics.html • Phonics Play www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ • Letters and Sounds www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2-games.html • Family Learning www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html

24. MANY THANKS TO YOU ALL! • Any questions?