How we teach phonics at school

1. ADING

2. Phonics
oa
oo ee
ear
ow
ai
th
sh
ng
or

4. Why teach phonics?
• Phonics helps children to
develop good reading and
spelling skills
e.g. cat can be sounded out
for reading and spelling

5. Very important to use...
Correct vocabulary
• We all need to use the same
language at home and at school.

6. PHONEME
•The smallest unit of sound in a word.
c a t
•There are 44 phonemes in the English
language.

7. How many phonemes are in
these words?
•dog
•coat
•plop
•butterfly

8. Very important to use...
Correct
pronunciation of
phonemes

9. GRAPHEME
• Letters representing a phoneme
cat
coat
plop
butterfly
Children need to practise recognising
the grapheme and saying the phoneme
that it represents.

10. How do we teach phonics?
• Use Letters and Sounds
programme plus Jolly Phonics to
introduce each phoneme
• Multisensory
• Intially we teach one grapheme
for every phoneme

12. Phonic Bug

13. Once children are good with single
letter phonemes…
• DIGRAPHS – 2 letters that make 1 sound
ai ee oa ow
• TRIGRAPHS – 3 letters that make 1 sound
igh dge
• SPLIT DIGRAPH– 2 letters separated by
another letter
eg a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e

14. BLENDING
For reading
•Recognising the letter sounds in a
written word, for example
c-a-t or b-oo-k
and merging or ‘blending’ them in
the order in which they are written
to read the word.

15. SEGMENTING
•‘Chopping Up’ the word to spell it out
•The opposite of blending
•cat becomes c a t
•book becomes b oo k

16. TRICKY WORDS
•Words that are not phonetically
decodeable
•e.g. the, me, was
•Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will
become decodeable once we have learned
the harder phonemes
•e.g. out, there,

17. ALIEN WORDS
• Words that are decodeable but are not
real words

18. How you can help your child to read
• Engage with reading every day, re-reading a book 2-3 times is invaluable.
• Early reading skills
• Tip 1: Listen to your child read
• Your child might bring home ‘decodable’ books from school. Designed to allow your child
to learn how to read independently, these books help children apply their phonic skills –
sounding out the words on the page. Be patient and be impressed!
• Tip 2:Link letter sounds to letter shapes
• Your child will be learning letter sounds at school. Make sure you know how to say the
sounds correctly, and don’t forget that some words, like said and the, are tricky and
can’t be sounded out so keep pointing these out to practise them.
• Tip 3:Looking at words and letters
• After you have read a book, play letter-spotting and word games like these with your
child: Can you find Dan’s name on this page? Can you find the word ‘and’ on this page?
How many words can you find on this page that begin with ‘t’? Get your child to ask you
too!
• Tip 4:Sound out first...
• If your child gets stuck on a word, check first if it can be ‘sounded out’ or‘blended’ by
saying the letter sounds individually and putting them together quickly to hear the
word. If your child can’t work out the word, then you say it and move on .

19. Writing
•Correct pencil grip
•Cursive “school writing”

20. Useful websites
• www.minchacademy.net
• www.hamiltonathome
• www.oxfordowl.co.uk
• www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents
• www.jollylearning.co.uk/
• www.focusonphonics.co.uk/
• www.bugclub.co.uk