Good Afternoon

Welcome to our information session on supporting your child with phonics and reading .

Two quotes from ‘Reading Reflex’ by Carmen & Geoffrey McGuinness, Penguin Education, which you may find interesting!

�‘We recommend that children read aloud to an adult for at least thirty minutes each day until the age of ten, or until they have been reading well for about a year.’

�‘If your child’s reading is not yet as good as you would like it to be, you should supervise closely when she reads aloud.’

� And I would like to add…….. please make reading to your child your highest priority until they are well into Key Stage 2, to encourage their love of books and good stories, extend their comprehension skills and to introduce them to the wealth of exciting fiction available.

� A thought – how often does your child see you reading for pleasure?

Why Phonics?

� Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading by Jim Rose in 2006 (Rose Review)

� Reading by Six – how the best schools do it. (Ofsted Nov 2010)

Letters and Sounds is recommended.

Six phase teaching programme.

Why Phonics?� The aim is to secure essential phonics

knowledge and skills so that children can progress quickly to independent reading and writing.

� Reading and writing are like a code: phonics is teaching the child to crack the code.

� Gives us the skills of blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

Technical vocabulary� A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. A

phoneme may be represented by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters. Eg. t ai igh

� A syllable is a word or part of a word that contains one vowel sound. E.g. hap/pen bas/ket let/ter

� A grapheme is the letter(s) representing a phoneme. Written representation of a sound which may consist of 1 or more letters eg. The phoneme ‘s’ can be represented by the grapheme s (sun), se (mouse), c (city), sc or ce (science)

� Alliteration is the consonant sound at the beginning of several words in close succession.

Technical vocabulary� A digraph is two letters, which make one

sound.◦ A consonant digraph contains two consonants

sh th ck ll◦ A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel

ai ee ar oy

� A split digraph is a digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent (e.g. make)

� A trigraph is three letters, which make one sound. E.g. igh dge

Technical vocabulary

� Oral Blending – hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a spoken word (no text is used) for example, when a teacher calls out ‘b-u-s’, the children say bus.

� Blending – recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’.

� Segmenting – identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound to form the word ‘him’.

Summary of Phases

� Phase 1 (on-going)◦ To distinguish between sounds and become familiar with rhyme,

rhythm and alliteration.

� Phase 2 To introduce 19 grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

� Phase 3 To teach one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes in order to spell simple regular words.

� Phase 4 To read and spell words containing adjacent consonants.

� Phase 5 To teach alternative pronunciations for graphemes and alternative spellings for phonemes.

� Phase 6 To develop their skill and automaticity in reading and writing.

Phase 1 - ongoing� To develop language and increase vocabulary through

speaking and listening activities.� To develop phonological awareness.� To distinguish between sounds.� To speak clearly and audibly with confidence and control.� To become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration.� Use sound talk to segment words into phonemes.

Phase 2

To introduce grapheme-phoneme correspondences

�Children know that words are constructed from phonemes and that phonemes are represented by graphemes.�They have knowledge of a small selection of common consonants and vowels – only 19!�They blend them together in reading simple CVC words and segment them to support spelling. – use of magnetic letters!

Phase 2

Letter Progression� 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 s

Correct Articulation of phonemes is essential!

Pronunciation - not ‘uh’ on the end – use soft voice!

Video – http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/primary-literacy-cpd-phonics-session-video-exemplification

Phase 2 – Example Activities

� Sound Buttons� Pebbles with letters on� Cutlery drawer organiser – sort objects

by letters.� Nursery Rhymes� Water brushes� Writing on back/floor/wall with finger

Tricky Words

� Phrases to represent the word. E.g. silly ants in dustbins – said.

� Jumping up to hit the word� Stepping on the stairs� Matching pairs game� Regular practice

Phase 3To teach children one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes in order to read and spell simple regular words.

� Naming and sounding letters of the alphabet.� Recognise letter shapes and say a sound for each� Hear and say sounds in the order in which they

occur, and read simple words by sounding out and blending.

� Recognise common digraphs and read some high frequency words.

Phase 4To teach children to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants and polysylabic words.

�Teaching should focus on the skills of blending and segmenting words containing adjacent consonants.

b l a ck s t r o ngc c v c c c c v c

f e l t b l a n kc v c c c c v c c

Phase 5To teach children to recognise and use alternative ways of pronouncing the graphemes and spelling the phonemes already taught.

� Teaching the long vowel phonemes

� Read and spell phonetically decodable 2/3 syllable words e.g. bleating, frogspawn, shopkeeper.

� Choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes when spelling words.

� Recognise an increasing number of high frequency words automatically.

� Spelling complex words using phonetically plausible attempts

ai a-e ay

� Seeing themselves as writers!

HIGH FREQUENCY WORDSSometimes called

KEY WORDS or SIGHT VOCABULARYThe first 100 words taught make up roughly 50% of ALL reading!

It is possible to blend words such asit on can

but they are so common that if a child sounded them out every time they came across them in their reading it would make the whole process VERY slow.

TRICKY WORDS‘Non-decodable’ words by phase;

Phase 2: to the no go I intoPhase 3: he she we be me was you they are all my herPhase 4: said have like so do some come were there little one when out whatPhase 5: oh their people Mr Mrs looked called asked could

The TRICK is to guide your child towards the most useful strategy when encountering

unfamiliar words.

� SIGHT VOCABULARY: the way in which we read most words.

With experience, and a structured programme, children build up a bank of known words. In the early days they may muddle some, eg saw/was and temporarily forget many.

Regular, frequent, reading at home is the best way to secure these words.

� PHONICS:less common to adult reading, but the way

in which we tackle new words.

Children ‘sound out’ words, d-o-g = ‘dog’, c-ow = ‘cow’, tr-ai-n = ‘train’.

Phonics forms the core of early reading programmes in schools in Britain today.

� CONTEXTURAL CLUES:The most common way in which we, as adults, tackle

unfamiliar words and check for meaning.

First skills for children centre on using picture clues, often in conjunction with initial phonics, eg ‘the boy has a *** car’ / ‘the boy has a r** car’, quick look at the picture, ‘the boy has a red car’.

Quicker and more fluent than relying totally on phonics.

Some books may appear to have more or less words than others but their difficulty for the child will depend to some extent on how well the pictures support the text.

HEARING CHILDREN READ� Reading is undertaken at many times in the day, and for different purposes,

a list of equipment needed, selection of snacks, instructions for a task for instance.

� You may hear us refer to different kinds of reading in school.

� SHARED READING: in a class group children look at an enlarged text, follow well paced reading and join in with elements of this, eg “I’ll huff and I’ll puff…..”. Strategies for tackling words are taught and focus words and patterns are covered. This is an excellent way of extending children’s reading and teaching comprehension skills.

� GUIDED READING: in a small group all children have their own copy of the same text. This is at a level to be ‘instructional’ to your child and reading is supported in introducing the book, selecting strategies to tackle new words, checking understanding as children read and refining comprehension skills, eg “what words in the text tell you the answer?” Children do not read aloud, or in unison, but learn to read quietly to themselves.

INDIVIDUAL READING

�We hear children read their individual reading books during and at the end of each set of books to check progress and next steps.

�We have a variety of reading books that we choose a path through, depending on skills to be practised.

�Early books often have a ‘parent’s page’ to be read, or with prompts for questioning children’s understanding.

�Children should be thoroughly familiar with a book before attempting to read it. Let your child look through the book, go through it with them page by page, chatting about what is happening and encouraging them to use the vocabulary that they will read (ie you read it to yourself and ask appropriate questions). For instance; ‘A red car.’ May be introduced by “what has the girl got?” “A car”.Yes, that’s right. “What colour is it?” “Red.”

�Reading early books is about 80% preparation/20% reading.

What can I do at home?� Read to your child� Ask your child to find items around the house that

represent particular sounds, i.e. ‘oo’ - ‘spoon’ ‘bedroom’� Play matching pairs – with key words or individual

sounds/pictures.� Key words on the stairs� Play tricky word bingo� Flashcard letters and words – how quickly can they read

them?� Notice words/letters in the environment.� Go on a listening walk around the house/when out and

about.� Lots of activities online for children to practice their

phonic knowledge.

Information & games websites� http://www.ncbc.co.uk/NCBC/Home.html

� http://www.ncbconline.net/NCBC_Shop/PersonalFrameset.lasso

� http://www.letters-and-sounds.com

� http://www.ictgames.com

� http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/

� http://www.literacytrust.org.uk

� http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/teachers/index.shtml

� http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/zcqqtfr

Thank you

We aim to keep you informed of your child’s progress and appropriate ways in which you can

help them at all stages of their reading.

However…..please DO come and ask any questions you

may have, at any time.

Reading SCHEMES used in school:We feel that there is no competition for developing a real and lifelong love of

books through sharing stories and non-fiction textswith adults and other readers.

In using a variety of reading schemes we aim to support the children’s acquisition of basic skills to enable them to read these books for themselves.RIGBY ROCKETS

OXFORD READING TREE

� Project X

� Floppy’s Phonics

� Read With Biff, Chip & Kipper

� Traditional Tales

� Songbirds

� First Words/Sentences

� Read, Write Inc

STORYWORLD

ALL ABOARD

These are supplemented by:

OXFORD READING TREE

� Trunk stories

� Owls, Sparrows, Magpies & Wrens

� Tree Tops

� Victor Stories

� The Two Bears

� Playscripts

FLYING BOOT

WELLINGTON SQUARE