Phonics
Phonics is taught daily in Early Years. During our discrete, short sessions children follow a ‘phased’ learning routine based around the Letters and Sounds publication. We also learn the songs and actions from Jolly Phonics, more information can be found at http://jollylearning.co.uk/
Phase 1 consists of activities focusing on listening skills. They are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting. It is so important that children are confident in this phase of phonics before moving on to learning letter sounds so we make sure we are secure in this stage before moving on. Activities that support this phase include games such as listening walks around your local environment, rhyming in books and using musical instruments to improve repetition and listening skills.
Phase 2: During this phase we begin learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. We use Jolly Phonics songs and actions to help the children learn each sound. These can be found by searching Youtube for “Jolly Phonics Phase 2.” As we learn our sounds we apply this to our reading. We do this by teaching the children to blend sounds together to make words. For example reading “c-a-t cat.”
We also learn how to segment words into their separate sounds and begin to apply this when writing. As well as learning letter sounds we also learn to recognise and read tricky words which are not phonetically decodable and high frequency words which are.
All letter sounds and actions can be viewed on our school website at http://www.aatharriers.org/260/ks1-phonics-workshop-videos
To find out more and for useful and fun activities see http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2-games.html
Phase 3: We move onto Phase 3 once we are confident in recognising, reading and applying phase 2 sounds to our writing. In this phase 3 learn the remaining sounds of the alphabet, a new set of tricky words and a new set of sounds known as diagraphs. They are: ai, oa, ie, ee, or, ng, oo, ch, sh, th, qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar
Like Phase 2, we practice recognising and applying these new sounds to our reading and writing during our discrete daily phonics sessions.
“I am satisfied with the wonderful work of the teachers, my son is delighted. I am impressed that my child uses English words in such a short time.”
PARENT OF CHILD IN EARLY YEARS (9TH OCT 2020)
EYU Phonics Meeting
Our Phonics Meeting Presentation for Parents, on 6 February 2019, is now available to download. It provides help for parents to understand how we teach our pupils to read and how to become confident readers, with lots of useful links to phonic games to try at home.