How to help at home Praise and encouragement Special place and time to read together Enjoyment Fun
Phonics! Remember... Children need to use the letter sounds (not names) to decode words
Phonic terms A phoneme is a single sound made by a letter (or combination of letters). There are 44 phonemes to learn. Phonemes are put together to make words. A grapheme is the letter (or a combination of letters) that is written to represent a sound. Graphemes can be one letter e.g. ‘t’, two letters e.g. ‘th’, three letters e.g. ‘igh’ or 4 letters e.g. ‘ough’. cvc stands for consonant vowel consonant. ‘pan’ is a cvc word. ccvc stands for consonant consonant vowel consonant. ‘plan’ is a ccvc word.
Synthetic phonics The ‘ synthetic ’ part does not mean man-made, it refers to the process of synthesis, blending the sounds together into a word. Synthesis is the process of blending (synthesising) the individual sounds in a word together, working from left to right, to read them. Segmentation is the process used to spell a word. Starting from the first sound and working systematically all the way through, break down the whole word into chunks of sounds. Segmentation is the reverse of synthesis (blending).
The alphabetic code The alphabet has 26 letters but the English language has 44 sounds. The additional sounds are represented by several letters combing together, all the letters making one new sound. The alphabetic code shows all 44 phonic sounds in an incremental sequence.
Word games to play with the reading book (also see your booklet for more ideas) High frequency word hunt e.g. the, said Sentence chop Sound/blend spotter games. Who can be the quickest?
Phonics is important, but don’t stop the focus here... Draw children’s attention to the pictures to help work out what they are reading As questions to help your child think about what is going to happen next... etc. Talk about the story, what you have read together. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT BEING ABLE TO READ ALL THE WORDS!!
Language Comprehension Supported in school by... Support at home by... Small world play Lots of talking about the story Role-play Paintings/models of stories/characters Dressing up Drawing pictures of favourite characters and making up stories for them Questioning Talking about stories
What reading looks like in school 1:1 reading Group/guided reading Using a wide range of text types Remember to draw attention to print in the environment at home too
Children are expressing their love of stories, known characters, own ideas and are keen to write these down Children are encouraged to write down the sounds they can hear in the words (oral segmenting is very important to observe at this stage as recall of the correct letter shapes is a higher level skill)
Helping at home... forming letters Encourage ‘frogs leg’ pencil grip (pinch and flick!) Movement of letter shapes is of most importance (not neatness!) Encourage and praise all ‘writing’
Time to try phonic activities! Look at the activities on the table and have a go!
TIME TO GET OUT YOUR I PHONES!!!!! Download this app – it’s brilliant ‘hairy phonics’