Phonics Workshop
for Parents
Supporting your child with phonics and reading
Learning Intentions
 To understand the importance of phonics.
 To get an idea of how phonics is taught in
school.
 To understand the progression through
phonic phases and how to support and
develop children’s learning.
 What can I do at home?
Can you read and understand
this?
I pug h fintle bim litchen.
Wigh ar wea dueing thiss?
Ie feall sstewppide!
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.
High quality phonics work…
• Interactive multi-sensory phonic session at their own
level.
 A session led by a member of staff of shared reading
and/or shared writing.
 Opportunities for independent reading and writing.
 Pace and progression is key.
• We use the ‘Letters and Sounds’ principles and practice
of high-quality phonics. ‘Letters and Sounds’ is also used
alongside the ‘Read Write Inc’ phonics programme.
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)
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 - e)
 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
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’.
Technical vocabulary
REMEMBER!
CVC refers to phonemes NOT LETTERS!
Phase 1 – Nursery & 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.
• Example activities - listening walks, dodgems, Silly
Soup, rhyming chants/songs,
Phase 2 – Reception
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!
Correct Articulation of
phonemes is essential!
Pronunciation - not ‘uh’ on the end –
use soft voice!
Video – Pronunciation Guide
http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/resources/so
und-pronunciation-guide/
Phase 2 – Example Activities
 Sound Buttons on green word cards
 Cross the River
Phase 3 - Reception
To 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 4 – Reception/Year 1
To 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.
 They should not be taught in word families such as
spot, spit, spin as the children will treat ‘sp’ as one
unit.
Phase 4
Children now have the ability to blend and segment
therefore they are moving beyond simple cvc words
to cvcc, ccvc, ccvcc and cccvc.
b l a ck
ccv c
felt
cvcc
s t r o ng
cccv c
blank
ccvcc
Phase 5 – Year 1
To 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!
Year 1 Phonics Screening
• A screening check for year one to encourage
schools to pursue a rigourous phonics
programme.
• Aimed at identifying the children who need
extra help are given the support.
• Assesses decoding skills using phonics
• 40 items to be read (20 real words, 20 pseudo
words)
• If children do not pass in Year 1 they have to
retake the test at the end of Year 2.
Tracking and Progress
• Children are assessed briefly throughout each
session to ensure understanding and good
progression.
• Children are assessed each half term.
• Children move teaching groups to
accommodate their need and ability.
• Year 1 Phonics screening check.
How can I help? - Reading Books
 Your child will be bringing home two reading
books each week. Talk about the book, the
character, what is happening in the story,
predict what may happen next. Encourage a
love of reading – not a chore!
 Phonics Sound Book – to support the phonics
learnt at school.
•
Words First Pot
What else can I do at home?
• 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
• 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.
Phonics games websites
 http://www.letters-and-sounds.com
 http://www.ictgames.com
 http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/Phase2Menu.h
tm
 http://www.tesphonics.com/
 www.activelearnprimary.co.uk (Bug Club)