A Guide to Phonics
Being able to read is the most important skill children will learn during their early schooling and has far- reaching implications for lifelong confidence and well - being.
(‘Letters and Sounds’ Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics)
Why Phonics?
Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way - starting with the easiest sounds and progressing through to the most complex – it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read and spell.
Almost all children who receive teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and to read for enjoyment.
Children who have been taught phonics also tend to read more accurately than those taught using other methods, such as ‘look and say’. This includes children who find learning to read difficult, for example those who have dyslexia.
What is Phonics?
Phonics is a way of teaching children to read and spell. We teach the children how to:
recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes;
identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make - such as ‘sh’ or ‘oo’; and
blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word.
Children can then use this knowledge to ‘de-code’ new words that they hear or see. This is the first important step in learning to read.
We also teach the children how to:
segment (split) words for spelling.
How do we teach Phonics?
Phonics is taught using the highly structured Letters and Sounds programme, working through the 6 progressive Phases.
Children are taught:
· The full range of common letter/ sound correspondences.
· To hear separate sounds within words.
· To blend sounds together.
· To segment words to spell them.
What are speech sounds?
Although there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, there are more than 40 speech sounds.
Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound in a word.
Grapheme – What we write to represent a sound/ phoneme – for some phonemes, this could be more
than one letter.
Blending
Oral Blending:
Hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging (blending) them together to make a spoken word – no text is used.
For example, when children hear /b/u/s, they will say bus.
This skill is taught before blending using printed words.
Blending:
Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c- u- p, and blending them in the order which they are written, to read the word ‘cup’
Digraphs
Two letters which make one sound.
A consonant digraph contains two consonants next to each other, but they make a single sound. e.g. sh, ck, th, ll
Examples of consonant digraphs
ll sh ng
w i l l sh i p s i ng
A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel but thetwo letters still make a single sound. e.g. ai ee ar oy
Examples of consonant digraphs
oo ai oi
b oo k r ai n c oi n
Trigraphs
Three letters, which make one sound.
Examples of consonant digraphs
igh ear air
n igh t f ear ch air
Letters and Sounds
Phase One
Phase one comprises of seven aspects.
Aspect One: Environmental Sounds
Aspect Two: Instrumental Sounds
Aspect Three: Body Percussion
Aspect Four: Rhythm and Rhyme
Aspect Five: Alliteration
Aspect Six: Voice Sounds
Aspect Seven: Oral Blending and segmenting
The aim of this phase is to foster children’s speaking and listening skills as preparation for learning to read with phonics.
Phase Two
By the end of phase two children should be able to read some vc and cvc words.
Children will also learn to read the ‘tricky’ words ‘the, to, go, I and no.’
Five sets of letters are introduced – one set per week.
Children are taught reading and spelling throughout the week.
The activities used to teach vary and can be adapted.
They are multisensory and appeal to different learning styles.
Phase Three
Children are taught another 25 graphemes.
Children will then use this knowledge to blend and segment two syllable words.
Children continue to blend and segment CVC words for reading and spelling.
Phase Four
By Phase 4 children are able to represent each of 42 phonemes by a grapheme.
Children will be able to blend and segment CVC words for reading and spelling.
Phase 4 is consolidation of children’s knowledge.
Children are encouraged to practice blending for reading and segmenting for spelling of adjacent
consonants.
Phase Five
Throughout this Phase children will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes.
They will learn alternative pronunciations of graphemes including split digraphs.
Phase Six
Children working at phase six can read lots of words automatically.
Children can decode words quickly and silently.
Children’s spelling will be phonemically accurate.
During this phase children become more fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.
Teaching Sequence
Each session follows the same format:
Revisit / review
Practising previously taught phonemes, digraphs or trigraphs every day.
Practising a small number everyday helps the children remember.
Children need plenty of opportunities for “over-learning”.
Teach
The new Phoneme is introduced in memorable ways.
Stories, songs, actions, props e.g. jelly, puppets, and film clips etc.
are used.
Practise
Reinforce the learning so that it remains in the children’s minds.
Practise reading and/or spelling words with the new phoneme or practise previously taught phonemes / digraphs / trigraphs to reinforce learning from earlier sessions
Apply
Demonstrate how to apply the new learning by reading or writing a phrase or that incorporates one of the new phoneme / digraph or trigraph.
This helps ensure children understand that phonics is related to reading and writing and is not just isolated knowledge.
Each session is taught at a good pace, about 20 – 25 minutes long.
Year One Phonics Screening Check
Your child will sit with a teacher he or she knows and be asked to read 40 words aloud.
Your 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 your child is
struggling, the teacher will stop the check.
The check will contain a mix of real words and ‘non-words’ (or ‘nonsense words’). Your child will be told
before the check that there will be non-words that he orshe will not have seen before. Your child will be familiar with this because we use ‘non-words’ when we 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.