Phonics
What is phonics?
Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully. They are taught how to:
- Recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes (s, a, t)
- Identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as “sh” or “oo”
- Blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word
Key information:
- It’s important that you use the pure sound when pronouncing sounds with your child as this will support them in hearing the sounds when segmenting and blending simple words.
- When we teach the children a new sound we also teach them the letter name for this sound.
- We refer to two letter sounds as a digraph. The children will be taught that a digraph is two letters, one sound.
- We refer to three letter sounds as a trigraph. The children will be taught that a trigraph is three letters, one sound.
- We also teach the formation of the letter using the rhymes taken from Read Write Inc.
Letters and Sounds
Here at Little Hill, we teach phonics using the “Letters and Sounds” programme. Children have a phonics lesson every day, which is at least 20 minutes long. Phonics is taught in six phases:
Phase 1
Phonic work begins.
- Children learn 19 sounds – s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll ss
- They learn to blend the sounds together to make words.
- They learn to segment the sounds to spell words.
- Children begin to read VC (two letter) words e.g. at, in, on
- CVC (3 letter) words e.g. man, dog, sat
- They read 'SuperPower' words – words which you just have to learn e.g. the, why, come
Phase 3
Phonic work continues
- Children learn another 25 sounds – j v w x y z zz qu ch sh th ng ai ee igh oa oo ar ur ow oi ear air ure er
- They continue to read CVC words and practise blending and segmenting as in Phase 2
- They read more 'SuperPower' words (Common exception) and high frequency words.
Phase 4
No new sounds are introduced in this phase.
- They continue to read CVCC and CCVC words
- Children continue to practise spelling and reading words containing adjacent consonants e.g. went, lost, stop.
- They read polysyllabic words e.g. thunderstorm, chimpanzee, champion.
Phase 5
The children learn about sounds which are spelt in more than one way – ee (in seen) and ea (in seat), ou(in round) and ow (in down).
- They are encouraged to broaden their knowledge of sounds for use in reading and spelling.
- They will become quicker at recognising sounds which have more than one letter.
- They will become better at blending the sounds to make words.
- They read more 'SuperPower' words.
Phase 6
The children will be able to read hundreds of words, doing this in three ways:
- They will be reading words automatically if they are very familiar.
- They will learn about tenses, suffixes, prefixes
- Their reading will become increasingly fluent, but spelling is known to lag behind. This phase addresses this.
- Ask your child what sounds they have been learning at school.
- When reading with your child encourage them to use sounds to break down the word and then blend them together to read it.
- Read with your child and read stories to them each day. Other family members can help too!
- Word games such as “I Spy” can be an enjoyable way of teaching children about sounds.
- Encourage your child to read words all around them such as your shopping list, signs and adverts.
This youtube clip shows examples of the pronunciation each sound in a 'pure' manner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW_v-1s&safe=active . We encourage sounds to be pure as it helps greatly with spelling and reading.