What is Phonics?
Phonics teaching involves teaching children the sounds of letters ( not just the names) and how to segment and blend them together to make words , e.g c - a - t can be blended to make cat.
How it works?
At Nine Acres, the government the Letters and Sounds Program is implemented every day for a 20 minute block each morning. This start in EYFS and continues into Year One, where children will build on their knowledge and apply their skills.
Letters and Sounds Phases
There are Six phases that are taught in sequence:
Phase 1 : Rhyming , keeping rhythms and start to relate letter sounds to words e.g. b is for bag.
Phase 2 : Learn initial letters sounds and build 3 letters words.
Phase 3 : Learn all 44 phonemes and blend sounds together to read words.
Phase 4 : Blend consonants together to read difficult words e.g. blue , grab.
Phase 5 : Learn how to spell letter sounds in more than one way e.g rain, day, make.
Phase 6 : Learn how to spell word specific spelling e.g turned , beautiful Grade Two.
By the time children start Year One, they should be confidently working within phase four/five. If children are not at this level, they will be supported with additional phonic sessions.
In Year One children are expected to carry out the National Phonic screening check, where they are able to show their skills by reading real and made up words. Made up words are used to check they are confident with their sounds and segmenting and blending. These are vital skills and are the foundations of reading!
Children who do not meet the standard will be able to take the test again in Year Two.
How you can help at home.
Encourage and model correct pronunciation of sounds.
Reading daily to your child OR with your child OR listen to them read.
Encourage sounding out as one strategy when they are having trouble reading a word.
PRAISE all attempts! Reading is a skill that takes time and the more practice you do, the easier it becomes.
Useful definitions.
PHONEME - smallest unit of sound
GRAPHEME - written representation of the sound
DIGRAPH - two letters making one sound e.g ee TRIGRAPH - three letters making one sound e.g igh
SPLIT DIGRAPH - where two letters are not adjacent e.g a-e as in have