Aims

• What is phonics & why is it important?

• Making the sounds

• Segmenting and Blending

• Progression of sounds

• Resources to help at home

So what is phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.

Words are like codes and phonics teaches children how to crack the reading code.

Phonics concerns the learning of:

• 44 phoneme sounds.

• Blending sounds into words for reading.

• Segmenting words into phonemes for spelling and writing.

• Recognising the common word spellings.

• Developing fluency, leading to future success.

The 44 phonemes

Making the sounds

• B

• D

• T

• CH

• Easy to get wrong and can cause confusing when segmenting and blending.

• https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/phonics-made-easy/

Segmenting

• ‘Chopping up’ the word to spell it out

• Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m , s-t-or-k) and writing down letters for each sound to form the word.

Blending

• Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example:

b-a-t-ch

and ‘blending’ them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘batch’.

Have a go: Segment and Blend these words…

• drop

• bloom

• grist

• ploink

Phases

There are 6 phases that are taught in KS1:

•Nursery : Phase 1

•Reception: Phase 2 & 3

•Year 1 : Phase 3, 4 (recaps Ph 2 and Ph 3) & 5

•Year 2: Phase 5 & 6 (spelling rules, prefixes and suffixes)

Phase 2

Sounds are introduced in sets

Set 1: s a t p

Set 2: i n m d

Set 3: g o c k

Set 4: ck e u r

Set 5: h b f ff l ll ss

High Frequency Words

Phase 3

High Frequency Words

New Graphemes in Phase 5

Phase 5

Phonics Screening Check

Phonics learning is fun!Children learn and practise their phonemes in lots of fun ways:

• Sound talk and rhyming.

• Sorting sounds – magnetic letters

• Reading real and nonsense words.

• Writing words in chalk

• Reading and writing sentences. Silly sentences are great fun!

• Play ‘I spy’

• Use reading opportunities when you are out – do some word hunts.

• Use picture books

• Fiction & non-fiction

• Acting the story out

• Shared reading

• Go with the child’s interests

• Surround them with books

• Practise tricky words

Use short bursts every single day

Question Time!