Letters and Sounds A synthetic phonics programme Thursday 7 th November 2013
What is Letters and sounds? Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the DfE in 2007. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills and prepare children for learning to read and write. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children. There are six overlapping phases.
Phonics in our school? Stream the children according to individual needs 6 groups throughout Reception and Key Stage 1, taught by teachers and teaching assistants. Phonic expectations at end of each year group. Phonics screening Reading scheme closely follows the phonics phases. Homework- Education City, phonics books Phonics used all the time during teaching and learning
Phase 1 Concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work. Environmental sounds- Awareness of sounds around them through listening walks, drumming outdoors on different objects, playing sound lotto games. Instrumental sounds- Awareness of sounds made by different instruments though matching sound makers, adding sound to stories, making loud and quiet noises.
Phase 1 Body Percussion- Awareness of sounds and rhythm through action rhymes, copycat games, repetitive rhythms. Rhythm and rhyme- developing the children s appreciation and experiences in speech through rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out syllables in words. During the register we sometimes, clap out our names. Encourage the children to guess the end of a rhyming story. Alliteration- Focussing on the initial sounds in words through I-spy, matching objects which begin with the same sound.
Phase 1 Voice sounds- to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Blending is making the word, segmenting is dividing the sounds. /c/-/u/-/p/ cup. Metal Mike Oral blending and segmenting- blending bingo, saying the sounds /m/-/a/-/n/ children find picture of the man. Segmenting bag, children say phonemes of object in bag to friend, then they guess. The activities introduced in Phase 1 are intended to continue throughout the following phases.
Phase 1 Instrumental Sounds Activity.
In Phase 2, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time. A set of letters is taught each week, in the following sequence: 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 Tricky words I, no, go, to, the, into. Phase 2
As soon as each set of letters is introduced, children are encouraged to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words. They will learn to blend the sounds s-a-t to make the word sat. They might be asked to find the letter sounds that make the word tap from a small selection of magnetic letters. Phase 2
Phase 2 Letter & Sound Recognition Activity.
A spot of terminology! Phoneme -smallest unit of sound Grapheme -a way of writing down a phoneme Digraph -A grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme). Trigraph -A grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme). Blending -This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading. Segmenting -This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling.
Mr Thorne Phonemes
Phase 3 By the time they reach Phase 3, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 letters taught in Phase 2. In Phase 3 twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a time). They are in the following sequence. Set 6: j, v, w, x Set 7: y, z, zz, qu Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
Phase 3 During Phase three the children will also learn the letter names, using an alphabet song. They will still use the sounds when decoding words but they will begin to say the letter names they can see and write down. During Phase 3, the following tricky words (which can't yet be decoded) are introduced: he, she, we, me, be was you they, all, are my, her. The children will be learning to read and spell these tricky words.
Phase 4 When children start Phase Four of the Letters and Sounds phonics programme, they will know a grapheme (which is what we write down) for each of the 42 phonemes. They will be able to blend phonemes to read CVC (consonant-vowelconsonant) words and segment in order to spell them. Children will also have begun reading straightforward two-syllable words and simple captions, as well as reading and spelling some tricky words.
Phase 4 In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced. The main aim of this phase is to consolidate the children's knowledge and to help them learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and milk. More tricky words are introduced. There are: said, have, like so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what.
Phase 5 Throughout phase 5 we develop children s knowledge by teaching children; new graphemes alternative spellings alternative pronunciations new tricky words
New Graphemes Espresso Primary - Ash's phonics
Alternative Spellings Espresso Primary - Sal's phonics
Alternative Pronunciations Espresso Primary - Scully's phonics
Tricky Words
Phonics Screening
Now it s your turn...
Phase 6- Support for Spelling Autumn Term: Phase 5 Revision Conventions for adding -ed and -ing Spring Term: Compound words Adding other suffixes Summer Term: Adding prefixes to change meaning of root word. To discriminate syllables in multisyllabic words as an aid to spelling
Strategies Explanations 1. Syllables- To learn my word I can listen to how many syllables there are so I can break it into smaller bits to remember e.g. Sep-tem-ber, ba-by 2. Base words- To learn my word I can find its base word e.g. Smiling > smile +ing, e.g. women = wo + men 3. Analogy- To learn my word I can use words that I already know to help me e.g. could, would, should 4. Mnemonics- To learn my word I can make up a sentence to help me remember it e.g. could > O U Lucky Duck! people > people eat orange peel like elephants
And finally... How can you help???? Playing sound and listening games Talking to the children about the sounds/words they have learnt this week. Looking for those sounds in everyday situations. Displaying tricky words around the house. Reminding children to use phonetic strategies when reading and spelling unknown words Use EducationCity phonics area... coming soon! Encourage a love of reading and writing for leisure and enjoyment... BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL!