How you can help
Reading
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Read for at least 10 minutes a day with your
child
Encourage your child to segment words then
blend the sounds back together
Practise saying phonemes that your child finds
difficult.
Look for graphemes that make the same sound while reading and discuss these.
Ask your child to spot different graphemes and phonemes
within words quickly on the page.
Other ideas
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Make flashcards of words your child finds tricky and practise
them each day. Try to beat previous score.
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Make a snap game of consonant blends or different graphemes
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Odd one out– say three words and children have to tell you
which is the odd one out.
cake play time
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Children draw an alien and create names made from
different graphemes to make a pseudo word.
How to help with
Introduction
We believe that a close partnership with parents is essential for
children to benefit most from their time at Stradbroke Primary
School. The purpose of this booklet is to inform you of the school’s
phonics policy and to provide you with information which will enable you to support your child at home.
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Phonics is an integrated part of the timetable beginning
from Foundation Stage and throughout Key Stage 1.
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Children will receive high quality daily phonics teaching in
small groups suited to their individual needs.
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Children will work though the phonics phases 1– 6 as outlined by the Letters and Sounds document.
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During phonics sessions children will:
- learn new phonemes
- recognise different graphemes that represent a unit of
sound
- segment words for reading
- blend words for reading
- learn tricky words that cannot be decoded
- learn to read pseudo words
- practise forming letters for writing
Tricky words
Phase 4
do
so
some come
said
have
like
were
there little
one
when
out
what
Phase 5
Mr
Mrs
people
children
oh
their
looked
called
asked
could
should
would
Tricky words
Key words and phrases
Phoneme– Smallest unit of sound
Phase 2
ai
Grapheme—written representation of sound
I
no
go
Segment— break up
into
the
to
Blend— put back to-
ai ay ae
ey eigh
p-l-ay
gether for reading
Decode— sound out the word for reading
Pseudo word—nonsense word
Sound buttons– show each sound in a word to segment
for blending.
Phase 3
he
she
be
me
was
you
they
we
they
all
are
my
her
Consonant blend—
jacent consonants
Vowel digraph—
cent vowels
adtr
sh
ae ee
ch
spr dr fl
ie oa oo ue
adja-
Phonics Phases
Phase 1
The focus of Phase 1 is to develop children's speaking and
listening skills and lay the foundations for initial phonic work which
begins in Phase 2.
The most important part of Phase 1 is to get children attuned to
the sounds around them so that they to begin to develop oral
blending and segmenting skills ready for Phase 2.
Phase 2
In Phase 2, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time.
When each set of letters is introduced, children will be encouraged
to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to
segment and blend words for reading.
Prefixes and Suffixes
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add s or es to root words to make plurals
Add ‘ed too root words when writing in the past
tense
Add ‘ing’ to root words
Add the suffix ‘er to root words — bigger smaller
Add the suffex ‘est to root words — biggest
smallest
Recognise how the prefix ‘un’ changes the meaning
of a word — undo untie
Other suffixes that children will learn:
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‘ness’
kindness
tidiness
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‘ful’
hopeful
joyful
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‘less’
restless
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‘ly’
quickly
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‘ment’
enjoyment
useless
slowly
Phonics Phases
Phase 6
By the time children reach Phase 6 they will be able to read many
familiar words automatically and when they come across unfamiliar
words they will be able to apply their phonics knowledge to decode
them using their segmenting and
blending skills. With more complex unfamiliar words they will often
be able to decode them by sounding them out.
In their writing children should be able to have a go at spelling
them phonetically although not always correctly. In Phase Six the
main aim is for children to become more fluent readers and more
accurate spellers.
All phonics skills will also be taught and emphasised during literacy
and children will be expected to apply them in all
areas of the curriculum.
Phonics Phases
Phase 3
By the time children begin Phase 3, they will already be able to
blend and segment words containing the 19 letters that have been
taught in Phase 2.
In Phase 3, twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a
time) and children learn to use them to blend and segment words
fro reading.
Phonics Phases
Phonics Phases
Phase 4
Phase 5
In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced. During this phase
the children consolidate their knowledge by segmenting and
blending words containing the 42 phonemes and
graphemes taught so far. The main focus of this phase is for
children to develop knowledge of adjacent consonant blends both
for reading and spelling.
In Phase Five, children will learn new graphemes for phonemes
that they have previously learned.
For example, they already know ‘ai’ as in ‘pain’, but now they will
be introduced to ’ay; as in ‘play’ and ‘a-e’ as in ‘cake’.
Children will also be taught alternative pronunciations for graphemes they have previously learned
E.g. if they know ea in seal they will learn to recognise that in
some words the ea is pronounced differently such as ea in head
and break.