Letters and Sounds : principles and practice of high-quality phonics Phase 1 training

1. Letters and Sounds: principles and practice of high-quality phonics Phase 1 training

2. Aims • Clarify the content and expectations of phase 1 • Underline the importance of promoting good speaking and listening skills and phonological awareness • Develop practitioners’ subject knowledge • Introduce phase 1 Aspects and Strands as detailed in Letters and Sounds and consider suitable activities • Identify next steps for development in settings

3. Session outline • The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), Communication, Language and Literacy Development (CLLD) and Letters and Sounds • Phase 1 learning environment • Encouraging good listening skills • Planning activities • Speech sound discrimination and oral blending and segmenting • Next steps

4. EYFS, CLLD and Letters and Sounds • The EYFS sets the standards for learning, development and care • Good EYFS practice is fundamental to effective CLLD in the early years • Good CLLD practice supports and enriches effective EYFS provision • Letters and Sounds supports the importance of developing speaking and listening skills in a broad and rich language curriculum

5. EYFS and CLLD • Children's learning and competence in communicating, speaking and listening, being read to and beginning to read and write must be supported and extended • They must be provided with opportunity and encouragement to use their skills in a range of situations and for a range of purposes and be supported in developing the confidence and disposition to do so EYFS Practice Guidance page 39

6. What does CLLD mean for children? • Building relationships, learning to interact with others so they become skilful, confident communicators • Being able to differentiate and respond to different sounds and different people • Developing their individuality; learning to use their voice and feeling safe to express themselves • Developing their language skills through a multi-sensory approach

7. CLLD links to the EYFS principles • A Unique Child • Positive Relationships • Enabling Environments • Learning and Development

8. The background to Letters and Sounds: independent review of the teaching of early reading 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

9. Recommendations • Headteachers and managers of settings should give phonic work appropriate priority and reflect this in their decision making • Settings and schools should ensure that at least one member of staff is fully able to lead on literacy, especially phonic work • Monitoring arrangements should assure the quality and consistency of early phonic work

10. The review and implications for practitioners • Focus clearly on developing language comprehension through: • talking with children • reading to children • Focus clearly on developing sound recognition skills through: • tuning children into sounds • listening and remembering sounds • talking about sounds • introducing oral blending and segmenting of sounds in words

11. 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

12. Phase 1 • Crucial phase in developing speaking and listening skills and phonological awareness • Paves the way for a systematic phonics programme to begin • Continues well beyond the introduction of phase 2 • Needs to be shared with parents and carers • Vital for all children including those with special educational needs and those learning English as an additional language

13. CLLD, phase 1 and the communicative environment Discuss: • What are the important elements of an effective communicative environment in a setting?

14. CLLD, phase 1 and the communicative environment Practitioners who are knowledgeable about children’s communication and language development will provide an effective learning environment which includes: • authentic and meaningful language experiences • a range of literacy tools and props/resources • environmental print • learning centres • books

15. CLLD, phase 1 and the communicative environment continued… • An effective communicative environment • will develop: • rich and varied language experiences • language skills outdoors and indoors • activities that extend and support language with and without adults

16. Daily opportunities • Daily planned speaking and listening activities • Adult-led activities • Child-initiated activities • Exploring and applying within the learning environment • Developing speaking and listening skills through daily routines

17. Developing an effective phase 1 communicative environment • Think about your current learning environment • Look at the CLLD audit / Early CLLD audit • Discuss with a partner

18. Effective phase 1: developing the language for communication aspect of CLLD • How children learn to listen and speak is essential to them becoming effective and skilful communicators • To become skilful communicators children need to be provided with opportunity and encouragement to use their skills in a range of situations and for a range of purposes with people whom they know and trust • Developing speaking and listening skills builds the foundations for literacy

19. Encouraging good listening skills • Think about the things that annoy you when you are talking to somebody • Think what happens when you are listening carefully to what someone else is saying

20. Phase 1 Speaking and listening Working with children • Model good listening skills • Help children to tune into sounds • Adopt listening cues • Encourage children to listen carefully to and discriminate between speech sounds • Give children time to respond • Encourage them to make sounds themselves • Observe their successes and difficulties – look, listen and note • Provide plenty of opportunities for children learning English to become familiar with the ways in which sounds are made in English

21. Planning activities • Planned daily speaking and listening activities • Based on children’s own abilities and interests • Building on children’s prior experiences and achievements • Activities drawn from Letters and Sounds phase 1

22. Letters and Sounds – phase 1Seven aspects • Environmental sounds • Instrumental sounds • Body percussion • Rhythm and rhyme • Alliteration • Voice sounds • Oral blending and segmenting

23. Letters and Sounds – phase 1Three strands • Tuning into sounds (auditory discrimination) • Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) • Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension)

24. Planning adult-led activities Group task • Choose one of these five aspects Environmental sounds Instrumental sounds Body percussion Rhythm and rhyme Alliteration • Think of an adult-led activity for each strand in your chosen aspect

25. Planning for different aspects • Consider the children’s phases of CLLD development from those in the baby room to those in the 3 to 4 year old room • What would you need to think about when planning to cover the 7 aspects?

26. Observation and assessment • Look, Listen and Note • Early Years Foundation Stage

27. Letters and Sounds – phase 1aspect 6: voice sounds • Phoneme • Blending / Oral blending • Segmenting • Articulation

28. Oral blending and segmenting Phonics – concepts, knowledge and skills • Phonics consists of four main concepts, knowledge of letters and the two skills of blending and segmentation

29. Concept 1 Sounds/phonemes are represented by letters/graphemes English is an alphabetic language. All the sounds (phonemes) in each word are represented by letters (graphemes) Young children need to know this – words are not arbitrary sets of squiggles.

30. Concept 2 • A phoneme can be represented by one • or more letters: • t • kn • igh

31. Concept 3 • The same phoneme can be represented (spelt) more than one way cat kennel choir

32. Concept 4 • The same grapheme (spelling) may represent more than one phoneme

33. Blending … • Merging phonemes together to pronounce a word • In order to read an unfamiliar word, a child must attribute a phoneme to each letter or letter combination in the word and then merge together to pronounce the word

34. … and segmentation • Hearing individual phonemes within a word, e.g. ‘crash’ has 4 phonemes c-r-a-sh • In order to spell, a child must segment a word into its component phonemes and choose a letter or letter combination (e.g. – sh) to represent the phonemes

35. Knowledge of letters • There are approximately 44 sounds/phonemes in the English language • Children will learn to blend phonemes orally in phase1 • In phase 2 children learn to pronounce the sounds themselves in response to letters before blending them

36. Sound buttons fin bridge catch daughter

37. Letters and Sounds – phase 1 aspect 7: oral blending and segmenting • Oral segmenting and blending • Start with last word in sentence or phrase • No expectation that children are introduced to letter/sound correspondences during phase 1 • Importance of clear enunciation • Blending and segmenting – reversible processes

38. Review of current practice Consider phase 1 in terms of your current practice and the current learning environment: • Are the aspects and strands covered through current activities? • Are these activities systematically planned? • Do you regularly observe and assess the children in these activities? • Do you follow up these activities with opportunities for children to explore and apply their knowledge and skills in the learning environment? • Do you involve parents in children’s learning?

39. Key messages for phase 1 practice Work with a partner • List the most important messages from today’s training to share with your colleagues • Consider one aspect of your practice that you will change

40. Possible next steps • Share Letters and Sounds with setting colleagues • Complete the CLLD /Early CLLD audit with colleagues • Discuss activities you provide at the moment and think how they support the seven aspects of learning at phase 1 • Plan how you will ensure that children have opportunities for both adult-directed and child-initiated learning • Write an action plan for your setting identifying key changes to current practice

41. Further considerations • How is CLLD viewed by the practitioners in your setting? • Is there a specific policy for CLLD teaching and learning? What are the methods used for teaching CLLD? • How well versed are the committee members or governors? Do you have a specific CLLD link? • How are parents involved with your CLLD programme? • How are you monitoring the impact of your programme?