Phonics workshop

Wednesday 16th October 2013

Background •  The independent review of early reading conducted by Jim Rose confirmed

that “high quality phonics work” should be the prime means for teaching children how to read and spell words.

•  It is currently seen as good practice for schools to follow a systematic approach to teaching phonics.

•  In September 2011 the Government announced that a new statutory phonics screening check for all children in Year 1 would be introduced during that academic year.

•  The purpose of the phonics screening check is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard.

•  Children who have not reached this level should receive extra support from their school to ensure they can improve their decoding skills. These pupils will have the opportunity to retake the phonics screening check in Year 2.

Year 1 phonics screening

CtS   Na'onal  

2011-­‐2012   73%   58%  

2012-­‐2013   92%   69%  

The Simple View of Reading Phonics is a means to an end. Systematic, high quality phonics teaching is essential, but more is needed for children to acquire the goal of reading, which is comprehension.  

CtS Phonics Programme At CtS we follow a systematic approach to teaching phonics with dedicated daily phonics sessions from Nursery to Year 2 following the Letters and Sounds programme.

Phase One

(Nursery and throughout all phases) Aspect 1: Environmental sounds Aspect 2: Instrumental sounds Aspect 3: Body percussion Aspect 4: Rhythm and Rhyme

Aspect 5: Alliteration Aspect 6: Voice sounds •  Make your voice go down a slide – wheee! •  Make your voice bounce like a ball – boing, boing •  Sound really disappointed – oh •  Hiss like a snake – ssssss •  Keep everyone quiet – shshshsh •  Gently moo like a cow – mmmoooo •  Look astonished – oooooo! •  Be a steam train – chchchchch •  Buzz like a bumble bee – zzzzzzz •  Be a clock – tick tock.

Aspect 7: Oral segmenting and blending

CtS Phonics Programme

Phase two

(Reception x 6 weeks) The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters. By the end of the phase many children should be able to read some VC and CVC words and to spell them either using magnetic letters or by writing the letters on paper or on whiteboards.

s   a   t   p  

i   n   m   d  

g   o   c   k  

ck   e   u   r  

h   b   f      ff   l    ll   ss  

CtS Phonics Programme

Phase 3 (Reception x 12 weeks) The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme

j   v   w   x   y  

zz   qu   ch   sh   th  

ng   ai   ee   igh   oa  

oo   ar   or   ur   ow  

oi   ear   air   ure   er  

CtS Phonics Programme

phase four

(Reception Summer Term)

The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.

fot

keb

veen

quorg

thin

CtS Phonics Programme

phase five

(Year 1) The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant.

neighbour maintain

failure

Wednesday

exclaim

vacation

eight

tape

The  School  Sale  It  was  the  day  of  the  school  sale.  Mum  could  not  go  as  she  had  a  pain  in  her  knee,  so  Gran  said  she  would  take  Kate  and  Wayne.  They  could  not  wait!  At  the  school  gate,  Gran  paid  20p  to  get  in.  She  did  not  have  to  pay  for  Kate  and  Wayne  –  it  was  free  for  children!  As  soon  as  they  were  through  the  gate,  Gran  gave  Wayne  and  Kate  £1  each  to  spend,  and  told  them  not  to  go  too  far  away.  The  sun  was  shining.  “It’s  as  hot  as  Spain!”  said  Gran.  “I  think  I  need  a  cup  of  tea.”  At  the  tea  stall,  a  lady  put  Gran’s  tea  on  a  tray,  and  Gran  went  to  find  a  place  to  sit  in  the  shade.  Meanwhile,  Kate  and  Wayne  went  round  the  stalls.  Kate  had  her  face  painted  like  a  rainbow  and  had  a  go  on  the  “Name  a  Teddy”  stall.  Wayne  bought  a  game  of  chess  and  a  piece  of  chocolate  cake  for  Mum.  They  both  had  a  go  on  the  “Pin  the  tail  on  the  donkey”.  It  was  quite  safe  –  the  donkey  was  only  made  of  paper!  When  the  sale  was  nearly  over,  Kate  and  Wayne  went  back  and  found  Gran  fast  asleep  under  the  tree.  “What  a  shame,”  said  Kate,  “she’s  missed  all  the  fun!”                                          

 

Vocabulary

•  Phoneme •  Digraph •  Trigraph •  Segmenting •  Blending •  Split digraph •  Vowel digraph

Additional Skills •  The screening check is a test of pupils phonics not a reading test. •  Only words that are phonetically decodable will be included in the test. •  It is expected that teachers will ensure that elements of early reading not assessed

in the phonics screening are also taught, such as reading and discussing books. Additional skills pupils should possess by the end of Year 1 (not included in the phonics screening check) By the end of Year 1 children should: •  Apply phonic knowledge and skill as the prime approach to reading unfamiliar

words that are not completely decodable. •  Read many frequently-encountered words automatically. •  Read phonically decodable three- syllable words. •  Read a range of age-appropriate texts fluently. •  Demonstrate understanding of age-appropriate texts.

Content of the screening check

•  The screening check contains 40 words divided into 2 sections of 20 words. •  Both sections contain a mixture of real words and pseudo-words. •  All pseudo-words in the screening check are accompanied by a picture of an

imaginary creature to provide a context for the pupil (naming the type of imaginary creature) to ensure that they are not trying to match the pseudo- word to a word in their vocabulary.

Why non-words? •  Non-words are new to all children. They cannot read the non-words by

using their memory or vocabulary, they have to use their decoding skills. •  Non- words will not be homophones for real words: for example ‘beek’

would not be a non-word.

Year 1 Phonic Screening

geck

thazz

voo

blurst

fape

CtS Phonics Programme  

Phase six (Year 2) By the beginning of Phase Six, children should know most of the common grapheme– phoneme correspondences (GPCs). They should be able to read hundreds of words, doing this in three ways:

ü  reading the words automatically if they are very familiar;

ü  decoding them quickly and silently because their sounding and blending routine is now well established;

ü  decoding them aloud. Children’s spelling should be phonemically accurate, although it may still be a little unconventional at times. Spelling usually lags behind reading, as it is harder.      

During this phase children will learn phonic irregularities and how to add suffixes.    

 

Useful resources

Letters and Sounds Mr Thorne does phonics Phonics play