Phonics Journey at Darton Primary School

Nursery

In nursery we concentrate on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lay the foundations for the phonic Read Write Inc which starts in Foundation Stage 2 (reception). The emphasis is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Phonics is divided into seven areas. Each one contains three strands: tuning in to sounds, listening and remembering sounds and talking about sounds.

It is intended that each of the first six areas should be dipped into, rather than going through them in any order, with a balance of activities. Oral blending and segmenting will usually come later, when children have had plenty of opportunity to develop their sound discrimination skills.

1 General Sound Discrimination - environmental sounds

The aim of this aspect is to raise children's awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

2  General Sound Discrimination - instrumental sounds

This aspect aims to develop children's awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds

3 General Sound Discrimination - body percussion

The aim of this aspect is to develop children's awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

4 Rhythm and Rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children's appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

5 Alliteration

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

6  Voice Sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in

7 Oral Blending and Segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

Read Write Inc

At Darton Primary School, we are using the Read Write Inc (RWI) programme to get children off to a flying start with their literacy. RWI is a method of learning based upon letter sounds and phonics, and we use it to aid children in their reading and writing. 

Children work through the scheme at their own pace and are assessed and grouped regularly according to their current ability. The scheme is split into 3 sets of sounds. 

USEFUL WEBSITES

• Read Write Inc - For more information and ideas for supporting your child, visit the RWI website
• Oxford Owl - Visit the Oxford Owl website which has over 100 free Ebooks for to enjoy with your child
• Family Learning: Phonics Games - Phonics games will help your child to practise sounding out words, which will help them to read
• ICT games - Phonics and Early English games- Listen to the word and choose which flower has that word underneath it

RWI SET 1

First, your child will learn to read:

• Set 1 Speed Sounds: these are sounds written with one letter:                                                    
• Set 1 sounds written with two letters (‘special friends’).                                                         
• Simple words containing these sounds, by sound-blending
• Read words in carefully levelled Red, Green and Purple Storybooks.

Clear pronunciation of sounds is extremely important. This video will demonstrate how to say sounds clearly.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXcabDUg7Q

Set 1 sounds

Your child will learn to read words containing Set 1 Speed Sounds by blending sounds together to create words.  We call this 'Fred Talk'.

m-a-t    mat

c-a-t    cat

g-o-t    got

f-i-sh    fish            
s-p-o-t   spot

b-e-s-t   best

s-p-l-a-sh   splash.

RWI SET 2

Now that your child knows all their single sounds, some simple 'special friends' and has learnt to blend simple words, they will now learn: 

• To read and recognise Set 2 Speed Sounds:     ay ee igh ow oo oo ar or air ir ou oy
• To read words containing these sounds
• Read a wider range of  'red words'. (Words that cannot be read using phonic skills)
• To read Pink, Orange and Yellow Storybooks, building speed and fluency.

SET 2 SOUNDS 

Each sound is linked to a picture hook and a rhyme to help the children learn and remember the sounds.Clear pronunciation of sounds is extremely important. This video will demonstrate how to say sounds clearlyhttps://youtu.be/TkXcabDUg7Q

USEFUL WEBSITES 

Parent guide to Read Write Inc. Phonics | Oxford Owl - Really useful website that includes a worksheet for each letter of Set 2 to practise letter formation.

Set 2 Parent booklet

Amazon - RWI Flashcards Set 2 and 3 - A useful pack of flashcards to use when practising sounds and blending.

Your child is now growing in reading ability and confidence. In SET 3, they will learn to:

• Read Set 3 Speed Sounds    ea oi a-e i-e o-e u-e aw are ur er ow ai oa ew ire ear ure
• Read words containing these new sounds
• Read further 'Red words' that cannot be read using phonic skills.
• Read Blue and Grey Storybooks with increasing speed.

Each sound is linked with a picture and rhyme to help the children learn and remember them.

The pronunciation of these sounds can be found near the end of the below video.
https://youtu.be/TkXcabDUg7Q

This useful video, made by an RWI lead teacher, shows how you can help to teach your child set 3 sounds at home.

https://youtu.be/2o2b7nL1jrg

USEFUL WEBSITES 

Parent guide to Read Write Inc. Phonics | Oxford Owl - Really useful website that includes a worksheet for each letter of Set 3 to practise letter formation.

Set 3 Parent booklet

Amazon: RWI Parent Pack 3 - This is a useful pack that includes sound flashcards, a letter formation booklet and a poster to display at home.

Amazon - RWI Flashcards Set 2 and 3 - A useful pack of flashcards to use when practising sounds and blending.

Technical Vocabulary:

• 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.

We would like to share with you our practice of home reading. Once your child is confident with set 1 sounds and associated words, they will then begin to bring home reading books. There are 2 types of books that your child will be bringing home per week. Both books must be read everyday to help your child develop fluency in their reading.

Book Bag Books:

Your child will bring home a ‘book bag’ book. This an unfamiliar text where they will need to use their phonic knowledge to decode the words. The book only contains sounds that your child knows.

Book Bag Books are changed every Friday so please ensure that these are returned to school.

Please continue to write in their reading record daily.

Story Books:

As soon as your child starts to read the Read Write Inc. Phonics Storybooks, he or she will bring home a black and white Storybook. This is a copy of the colour version he or she will have read at school.

Your child will have read this story at least three times within school, so should be able to read the story confidently.

A brief explanation of how to follow the activities is included in the books.

Story Books are changed every Friday so please ensure that these are returned to school.

Please continue to write in their reading record daily.

Please don’t write on or damage the books as the books will be used by other children.

How to listen to your child read

• Ask your child to read the sounds and words before he or she reads the story.
• When your child reads the story, ask him or her to sound out.
• The words that he or she can’t read automatically. Don’t allow your child to struggle too much. Praise your child when he or she succeeds.
• Read back each sentence or page to keep the plot moving. (Your child’s energy is going into reading the words not the story.)