Phonics:�what’s it all about?

Supporting your child’s reading & spelling skills

What is phonics?

Phonics is learning to differentiate sounds and understanding that those sounds can be recorded using letters in a specific order.

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To support phonic knowledge, children need to master the skills of:

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• Segmenting- break it down (eg fish = f-i-sh)
• Blending- say it fast (eg sh-e-ll = shell)

How do we teach phonics?

At Ravensmead, we use FFT Success for All Phonics to teach children how to read and spell using grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs).

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The GPCs are taught in a progressive order, starting with single letters. It is important that children are saying the sounds without adding any addition sounds. EG ‘mmm’ NOT ‘muh’

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Then, children are taught that some GPCs are represented by 2 letters (eg. ff, ch, ar).

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This is taught throughout the Reception year.

How do we teach phonics?

As well as learning to read by decoding (breaking words down & then saying them fast), children also learn to read ‘red words’ which are words that cannot be segmented then blended.

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EG ‘said’ = s-ai-d. This will not make sense when blended, so we must learnt it as a whole word, knowing which is the ‘tricky’ part (the ‘ai’)

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The red words are also noted in your child’s reading diary

The phonics scheme

The order of which GPCs are taught when can be found in your child’s reading diary.

Terminology

• Grapheme- the written letters which make a phoneme
• Phoneme- a sound
• Letter name- the way a letter is named (as in the ABC song)
• Syllables- a unit of pronunciation (ra bbit-2)
• Digraph- when 2 letters make 1 sound (sh/ar/ll)
• Trigraph- when 3 letters make 1 sound (ear/igh)
• Segment (break it down)- breaking a word into its phonemes
• Blend (say it fast)- put the phonemes together to say the whole word

End of Reception expectations

Expectations

By the end of Reception, it is an expectation that children can read and spell words containing any of the GPCs from Phase 3 and can read many of the red words (common exception words).

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The home readers that your child brings home are selected to reinforce their phonics development in school. Therefore, your support at home is vital.

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Parent power!

How can you help at home?

• Practise the phonemes your child is learning (Can they find the grapheme when you say the phoneme? Can they say the phoneme when shown the grapheme?)
• Practise reading the red words on sight (say it quickly as it will not ‘sound out’)
• Read regularly (use their home reading books as they contain the GPCs that your child needs to practise and master)
• Orally practise segmenting and blending words just for fun- It’s time for b-e-d! Get your h-a-t. There are lots that are easily confused, so you may need to emphasise those, such as /th/, /f/ & /v/

Thank you!

If you have any questions about your child’s phonic development, please speak to their class teacher.

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We are here to help the children…

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