What is Phonics?

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully.  They are taught how to:

  • Recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes;
  • Identify the sounds the different combinations of letters make such as /sh/  or  /ee/ ; and
  • Blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word.

Children can then use this knowledge to ‘decode’ new words that they hear or see.  This is the first important step in learning to read. 

At Westcliff we use Red Rose Phonics as we feel this provides us with a rigorous approach but is also fun and very interactive - our children love their phonic sessions and quickly become passionate readers. 


Why Phonics?

Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way - starting with the easiest sounds and progressing to the most complex - it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read.  It is particularly helpful for children aged 5 - 7. 

Almost all children who receive good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words.  They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and to read for enjoyment. 

Children who have been taught phonics also tend to read more accurately that those taught using other methods.

 

Phonics Terminology

Your children will learn these terms and use them confidently during our phonic sessions. 

Phoneme  - a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.  We generally use about 44 phonemes in the English language. 

Grapheme - a grapheme is the letter or group of letters used to represent the sound. 

Oral Blending - hearing a series of spoken sounds and blending them together to make a word. No text is used. 

Blending - blending written phonemes together to read a word.

Segmenting - breaking down words into phonemes to spell.

Digraph - this is when two letters come together to make a phoneme, for example /oa/ in boat.  We say ‘Two letters, one sound’. 

Split Digraph - a digraph when the two letters are not adjacent.  For example the in line - the i  and the e make the /I/ sound but are split. 

Tricky words - these are words that we use regularly to read and write but that cannot be ‘sounded out’ but have to be learnt by sight.  For example, in phase 2 the children will learn to sight read the, go, to, no, go and into.

 

Phonics at home

Tips for teaching your child the phonemes (sounds):

  • It is important for a child to learn lower case or small letters rather than capital letters at first.  Most early books and games use lower case letters and your child will learn these first at school.  Obviously you should use a capital letter when required such as at the beginning of the child’s name, eg. Lucy. 
  • When you talk about letters to your child, remember to use the letter sounds:  a,  buh,  cuh, ….rather than the alphabet names of the letters:  ay  bee  see   dee. The reason for this is that sounding out words is practically impossible if you use the alphabet names. 
  • When saying the sounds of b, d, j and w you will notice the ‘uh’ sound which follows each, for example, buh, duh ……You cannot say the sound without it but try to emphasise the main letter sound (we just try to shorten the sounds and find this helps). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCI2mu7URBc  - this is a great clip for supporting the correct pronunciation of the sounds. 

There are a number of things that parents/carers can do to support early reading development:

  • Let your child see you enjoy reading yourself
  • Immerse your child in a love of reading
  • Make time for your child to read their school book to you every night
  • With all books, encourage your child to ‘sound out’ unfamiliar words and then blend fro left to right rather than looking at the pictures to guess the word
  • Regularly go over phonemes (sounds) with your child so you can support them with the ones they struggle with.

 

One of the key strategies we use to support the children is by asking the to add sound buttons/lines underneath words to help them identify the sounds they need to read, for example:

This is the order of phonemes that we teach to the children.  We expect Reception children to be ready to begin Phase 5 when they move up to Year 1.  Phase 4 looks at longer words and words with adjacent consonants - such as strap, stretch or thatch.

 

The following websites will help you support your child at home with their phonics (most of them are free):

https://readwithfonics.com/ - contains excellent videos and further guidance

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ - contains free games for children to read real and pseudo words. Go to the parents section and click on Interactive Games.

https://www.youtube.com/user/breakthruchris - contains lots of short videos to help you revise different phonemes with your child and children really enjoy using them to enhance their learning.

https://www.ictgames.co.uk/ - The literacy section had a range of fun interactive activities.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z7tr96f - The BBC bitesize has lots of short clips and games to play involving phonics.