Reception: How We Teach Reading

1. Phonics 2. High Frequency Words

sDo you see this letter? Did you know it has a name AND a sound?

•Each letter has a SOUND and a NAME

•We teach the letter SOUNDS not the names

•We will teach the names later

Synthetic Phonics – What does it mean?

Teaching the letter sounds.

This helps you to read.

catC-a-tIf you blend the sounds together,

they make the word ‘cat’. If you try to blend the letter names, it doesn’t help you hear the word.

Video of a lady making the phonemes

• Please look at the following website. It has a video of a lady saying all the letter sounds.

• http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/letters-and-sounds-articulation-phonemes-vowels-and-consonants

• Or search on www.youtube.com for “articulation of phonemes”

• We are working on putting the video straight on this website.

Phases

• In Nursery, children learn Phase One which teaches them listening skills. They need to have good listening skills before starting Phase Two.

• In Reception, children will learn Phase Two and Three. Here they will learn the letter sounds and use them to read and write.

• They will also learn tricky (high frequency words) off by heart (we will talk about this in a minute).

In Reception

• In Reception, we are starting Phase 2 this week!

• In Phase 2, your child will start to learn 2 letter sounds (and 2 high frequency words) a week.

• They will get sent home on keyrings so you can help your child learn them.

• Please help them learn them each week because there are LOTS to learn!

First letter sounds will be...

•s•a

Letters go home in this order

How many words can you make with these letters?

s a t i p n m d

This is what a text looks like to a child at the beginning stages of

reading.

When we teach children to read, we tell them to: “Look at the letter and make the sound.”

This is called blending or sounding out.

pin

tin

Synthetic Phonics

At first we will concentrate on simple sound to letter correspondence.

This is when a phoneme is represented by a single letter as in the

word /m/ /a/ /t/.

Fast!

Then we will concentrate the more difficult code such as one phoneme (sound) represented by 2 letters.

sh ch qu ck ng

We use those phonemes in these words:

ring king shop chopthing quiz ....and others!

At the same time as learning to blend the sounds to read your child will also learn to break down (segmenting) a word to write.

3 sounds (phonemes)

(Do you know what the three letter sounds (phonemes) are?)

But there are some irregular, tricky words!

The high frequency words….• We need to learn these by heart

• Not only are they high frequency but are usually also difficult to decode (sound out)

• Sometimes you can sound them out but we still want the children to know them instantly

was said me the they

We will also send home 2 high frequency (tricky)

words each week.

Please help your child to recognise them by showing your child the word and asking them to say the word straight away.

When your child can recognise them, they can start to write them.

Now having worked on these skills the child can begin to decode and recognise the

text.

t h e

t h eo n

c a t s a t

m a t

How can you help? By pronouncing the phonemes in the correct way. See:

www.getreadingright.com/Pronouncephonemes.htm and the previous links.

Your child will be getting 2 letter sounds and 2 high frequency words a week on their keyrings so you know what they’re learning.

Show your child the letters and words and help them practise saying and them. They need to learn to recognise them by heart.

Encourage them to read any books using these skills. They look at the letter and say the sound. If there is a tricky (high frequency word) in the book and it is one from their keyring, ask them if they know it.

Reading for Pleasure

• We do want children to love and enjoy books. There is no point them knowing how to read if they don’t want to read. Keep on having a cosy bedtime story with your child before they go to sleep. Talk about the characters and their favourite part of the story. Read to them, making the characters have different and exciting voices. This will keep children curious about books and stories. If they can recognise words during a bed time story, then that should be celebrated but don’t let it stop you from enjoying the fun and adventure of a story with your child.

• Decoding the text is not the only part of reading.• Enjoy!

Finally...If you have any questions, please ask a member of staff.

Remember: We are learning the letter

sounds not names