Year 1 Phonics
Children are taught to read by breaking down words into separate sounds or
‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to hear
and read the whole word.
d–o–g
There are around 40 different sounds.
Introduction
• In school, we follow the Letters and Sounds programme.
• Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the
Department for Education and Skills which consists of six
Phases.
• Main tool for teaching Children to read and write
• Replaced the alphabetic, and look and say/whole world
methods (although these are still used for Tricky Words)
Phase 1
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•
•
•
Taught in Reception or Nursery
Concentrates on speaking and listening skills
Children attuned to sounds around them
Lays the foundations for Phase 2 – developing oral
blending and segmenting
Phase 2
Letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time
A set of letters is taught each week, in the following fixed
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
Phase 3
Children already able to blend and segment words containing
letters taught in Phase 2
25 new graphemes are introduced during Phase 3
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 4
• No new Graphemes introduced
• Consolidate children’s knowledge
• Continue to practice reading and spelling words
Phase 5
Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative
pronunciations for these graphemes
Vowel digraphs: wh, ph, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, ew, oe,
au
Split digraphs: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e
Phase 6
The focus is on learning spelling rules for suffixes
Examples: -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er, -est, -y, -en, -ful, -ly, -ment, ness
Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when reading or writing. Focusing
particularly on spotting more unusual sound patterns.
Digraph- 2 letters making one sound
cow
Trigraphs- 3 letters making one sound
night
Split digraphs- 2 vowels with a consonant in
between.
spine - i_e
Fred Fingers for blending
Digraphs
Trigraphs
Split digraphs
• Every Year 1 child in the country will be taking the
statutory phonics screening check in June. The
Phonics Screening Check is meant to show how
well your child can use the phonics skills they’ve
learned up to the end of Year 1, and to identify
students who need extra phonics help.
• It is a list of 40 phonetically decodable words
containing a mixture of real and non words.
• It is not a reading test!
When will the screen take place?
In 2017 the check will take place during the week commencing
Monday 12 June 2017
What are ‘non- words’?
Non-words (or nonsense words, or pseudo words) are a
collection of letters that will follow phonics rules your child has
been taught, but don’t mean anything – your child will need to
read these with the correct sounds to show that they
understand the phonics rules behind them. This is deemed
important so that all children are not just reading from
memory but are made to use their decoding and blending
skills.
At St Vincent's, the children are used to reading non
words. Many of our children call them monster or alien
words and pretend they can read and speak ‘monster’!
Example non- words from the Year 1 Screening
Test
An example test
How will children be tested?
The screening test will take place one child at a time in a quiet
comfortable room.
During the week of 12 June, Miss Martin will ask each child to read
40 words aloud.
We will not be aware of what the individual words are until we test
each child as the tests have to be securely locked away.
The children will probably be familiar with some of the words, while
others will be completely new.
The check will normally take about 6-8 minutes and there is no time
limit.
• The check is carefully designed not to be stressful for the
children
• If a child is struggling, Miss Martin will stop the test.
• When we carried out test with the current Y2 last year they
all thoroughly enjoyed it!
What happens if my child is absent when
the check is administered?
Any child absent on the day the check is taking place for their
class can take it on their return to school, as long as this is
before the completion deadline.
If a child is absent from the date of the check until after the
completion deadline, he or she would be recorded as absent
when submitting the data. The child will still be tested for our
internal assessments.
What is the pass mark?
Expectations from the Government is that
pupils should achieve 32 out of 40 to reach the
expected level.
(This was the pass mark in 2016 so it could be
subject to change)
After the check
Children who did not pass the check in Year 1 will be retested
in Year 2 in the summer term.
If a child found the check difficult, we will put an intervention
program in place to help improve their phonic de-coding in Y2
It is important to remember that this is not a reading test
and focuses upon assessing your child’s ability to decode
real words and non-words.
Decoding is the process of reading a word by saying the
sounds then joining, or blending, those sounds together to
form the word.
herks
h-er-k-s
herks
Example Phonemes Pronunciation
Mr Thorne Does Phonics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBrH4sLgeyA
Geraldine the Giraffe!
Jolly Phonics Songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCjJYB07aSU