Phonics Phonics is a method of teaching beginners to read
and pronounce words by learning to associate letters or
letter groups with the sounds they represent.
What is Letters and Sounds? Letters and Sounds is a phonics
and
resource published by the Department for Education and Skills
in 2007. It aims to build on children's speaking and listening
skills and to prepare children for learning to read and spell by
developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a
detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills
for children from Nursery, with the aim of them becoming fluent
readers by age seven. At Goldsmith we deliver phonics teaching
using the Letters and Sounds and the Jolly Phonics Programme.
Ideas to help your child at home
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What is Jolly Phonics? Jolly Phonics is a thorough foundation
for reading and writing. It uses the Synthetic Phonics method to
teach the letter sounds in an enjoyable, multisensory way, and
enables children to use them to read and write words. Each
sound has an action which helps children remember the letter/s.
There are six overlapping phases of Letters and Sounds (See Table):
Phase
Phonic Knowledge and Skills
Phase One
(Nursery/Reception)
Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental
sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral
blending and segmenting.
Phase Two (Reception)
up to 6 weeks
Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to
make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple
captions.
Phase Three (Reception)
up to 12 weeks
Phase Four (Reception) 4
to 6 weeks
The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th
representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions,
sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple
code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language.
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No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to
blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.
Phase Five (Throughout
Year 1)
Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes
which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already
know.
Phase Six (Throughout
Year 2 and beyond)
Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.
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Play I - Spy around the house or out and about, in the
car or on the bus or train. e.g. “I spy with my little eye
something beginning with ‘s’ ” (remember to use the
sound of the letter rather than it’s name). Your child has
to guess which object you are thinking of. Take turns to
choose objects.
Ask your child to find all the objects in the room that
start with the same sound.
Try to see who is first to think of a word beginning with a
sound. Alternatively, who can think of the most words
beginning with that sound.
Play a game where you have to give clues to your child
and they have to guess the word - e.g. “I am an animal
that lives in the desert and my name starts with ‘c’ ”.
Write a letter of the alphabet on each page of a
scrapbook. You can then have fun together, collecting
pictures of objects from old catalogues and magazines
that begin with that letter. They may also like to draw a
picture to represent each sound.
Make letter shapes out of plasticine or play dough, or
trace them in sand on a tray.
Use magnetic letters (e.g. on your fridge door) to
encourage your child to build words on their own.
Rearrange letters in words to make other words. Play
word list games by making a simple word like ‘hat’ and
changing the first letter to make other words (e.g. ‘bat’,
‘cat’, ‘fat’, ‘mat’, ‘pat’, ‘rat’, ‘sat’)
Put up an alphabet chart on your child’s bedroom wall to
help learn their sounds.
Spend lots of time sharing books, reading stories
together and talking about the pictures, asking questions
and discussing what is happening and what might happen
next.
Sing Nursery rhymes and songs – e.g.Old McDonald, Pat
a Cake.
Letter sound BINGO!