Letters and Sounds

1. Letters and Sounds A parents guide to the teaching of Phonics

2. 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. Video 1

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

4. Useful definitions Phoneme-smallest unit of sound in a word. Grapheme-written representation of the sound. Digraph-two letters making one sound, e.g. ee Trigraph-three letters making one sound, e.g. igh Split digraph-where 2 letters are not adjacent, e.g. a-e

5. Letters and Sounds At Ladygrove we teach phonics using a government scheme called Letters and Sounds. It is a systematic programme for teaching phonics, reading and writing skills. It starts in the Foundation Stage and progresses through Key Stage 1 and 2.

6. Who and how often? It is a requirement that children in Reception are taught 20 minutes of letters and sounds per day. At Ladygrove years 1-4 are currently also spending at least 20 minutes a day on letters and sounds.

7. Phases Phonics and reading skills are taught in six distinct phases. These phases are set out in the letters and sounds document. Phases 1-6

8. Phases Phase 1: Children learn rhymes, keep rhythms and start to relate letter sounds to words. e.g. b for bag. Phase 2 Children learn initial letter sounds and build 3 letter words Phase 3 Children learn all 44 phonemes and blend sounds to read words Phase 4 Children blend consonants together to read difficult words e.g. blue, grab. Phase 5 Children learn how to spell letter sounds in more than one way e.g. rain, day, make. Phase 6 Children learn how to spell word specific spellings. E.g. turned, beautiful, shopping

9. Letters and Sounds at Ladygrove Recall: Revisit & review previous sound and word building Teach: a new phonic skill Practise: the new skill Apply in different situations. E.g. reading in a sentence, writing the word in a sentence, using skills in other words.

10. How you can help at home Pronunciation Reading-little and often Encourage sounding out Praise Tricky words

11. Useful websites www.sparklebox.co.uk www.twinkl.co.uk www.phonicsplay.co.uk Video-http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/letter-and-sounds-%E2%80%93-articulation-phonemes-vowels-and-consonants