How to support Phonics and Spelling
Phonics is the method of teaching reading and writing by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters. There are 44 sounds in the English language which we put together to form words. Some sounds are represented by one letter like the 't' in tin, whilst other sounds are represented by two or more letters like 'ck' in duck.
Children are taught the sounds, how to match them to letters and finally how to use the letter sounds for reading and spelling.
Technical Vocabulary that we use when teaching phonics in school:
- Phoneme: the smallest unit of sound. There are 44 phonemes in English. Phonemes can be put together to make words.
- Grapheme: way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. tch or 4 letters e.g ough
- Digraph: a grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).
- Trigraph: a grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).
- GPC: grapheme-phoneme correspondence
- Blending: Looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading.
- Oral Segmenting: Hearing a whole word and then splitting it up into the phonemes that make it. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to segment words to spell them.
- Segmenting: Hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling.
Phonics information session
A online session for Reception/Year 1 parents was held on 24th November 2021. Please find below the presentation and associated resources:
- Phonics Information Session.pptx
- Phonics Terminology.docx
- Level 3 Phonemes and Tricky Words.pdf
- Level 5 Phonemes Tricky Words and Year 1 Common Exception Words.pdf
- Level 2 Phonemes and Tricky Words.pdf
Phonics and reading resources
Some words cannot be read or spelt phonetically and need to be read and learnt as sight words. You will see the words in the High Frequency Word Lists and the Common Exception Word Lists.
Some of the most useful guides are listed below.
Phonics: How to pronounce pure sounds
Phonic Sound Mats
- Phonics Sound Mat - Phase 2
- Phonics Sound Mat - Phase 3
- Phonics Sound Mat - Phase 4 - Blends and Clusters
- Phonics Sound Mat - Phase 5
Tricky Words Mats
High Frequency Words
Common Exception Words and Spelling Lists