Phonics

Teaching Assistants 17th May 2012

Read this to your partner.

I pug h fintle bim litchen.
Wigh ar wea dueing thiss? Ie feall sstewppide!

Aims
To ensure all delegates have an overview of the teaching of phonics in school. To ensure consistent messages regarding the teaching of phonics. To update phonic subject knowledge.

Successful reading demands both word level reading and the ability to comprehend what has been read.

This is formalised in The Simple View of Reading

Phonics: The priority for training

It is hardly surprising that training to equip those who are responsible for beginner readers with a good understanding of the core principles and skills of teaching phonic work, including those responsible for intervention programmes, has emerged as a critical issue

The Rose Report

Independent review of the teaching of early reading, Final

report, Jim Rose, March 2006 (DfES 0201-2006DOC-EN. ISBN 1-84478-684-6)

Rose Recommendations
More attention needs to be given to speaking and listening from the outset. High quality, systematic phonic work should be taught discretely and daily and in line with the definition of high quality phonic work as set out in the Rose report. Phonics should be set within a broad and rich language curriculum that takes full account of developing the four interdependent strands of language. For most children phonics teaching should start by the age of five, subject to the professional judgement of teachers and practitioners.

The Simple View of Reading

Word-level reading and language comprehension are both necessary to reading Neither is sufficient on its own This is formalised in The Simple View of Reading Reading comprehension is a product of word recognition and language comprehension

Word recognition

Language comprehension

Word Recognition

Good language comprehension, poor word recognition

Good word recognition, good language comprehension

+
Good word recognition, poor language comprehension

Poor word recognition, poor language comprehension

Language comprehension

Implications for teaching

Staff need to be aware that different skills and abilities contribute to development of word recognition skills from those that contribute to comprehension. Staff need therefore to keep these two dimensions of reading separate in their minds when they plan their teaching.

Discussion
Consider the conceptual framework the simple view of reading.
On your tables discuss children that you have worked with and where they would be plotted on this graph. Consider how you would address their needs through your teaching.

A phonics quiz
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. What is a phoneme? How many phonemes are in the word strap? a) What is a digraph? b) Give an example a) What is a CVC? b) Give an example Why has hiss got ss at the end (and not s)? Why has think got a k at the end (and not ck or c)? a) What is a trigraph? b) Give an example How many phonemes are in the word twenty? Write down at least four different ways of representing /ae/ 10. What is the best guess when you write /ae/ at the end of a word?

Enunciation
Teaching phonics requires a technical skill in enunciation.
Phonemes should be articulated clearly and precisely.

Letters and Sounds

DVD clip enunciation

Phonic terminology:
some definitions

Some definitions
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.

C-u-p

c-a-t

d-o-g

Count the phonemes

How many phonemes can you count in the following words?
Mask Car Jumper Language Communication Success

Some definitions
Grapheme
Letter(s) representing a phoneme t ai igh

Some definitions
Blending
Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example c-u-p, and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word cup.

Some definitions
Oral blending
Hearing a series of spoken sounds and merging them together to make a spoken word no text is used.

For example, when a teacher calls out b-u-s, the children say bus.
This skill is usually taught before blending and reading printed words.

Some definitions
Segmenting

Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. h-i-m) and writing down or manipulating letters for each sound to form the word him.

Some definitions
Digraph
Two letters, which make one sound

A consonant digraph contains two consonants sh ck th ll

A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel ai ee ar oy

Some definitions
Trigraph
Three letters, which make one sound

igh

dge

Some definitions
Split digraph
A digraph in which the two letters are not adjacent (e.g. make).

Some definitions
Synthetic phonics
Synthetic phonics refers to an approach to the teaching of reading in which the phonemes [sounds] associated with particular graphemes [letters] are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, , t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word. Synthetic phonics for writing reverses the sequence: children are taught to say the word they wish to write, segment it into its phonemes and say them in turn, for example /d, , g/, and write a grapheme for each phoneme in turn to produce the written word, dog.
Definition adopted by the Rose Report

CVC words
What do you understand by the term CVC words? On your table make a note of five ten CVC words.

CVC Words
C consonant phoneme
V vowel phoneme C consonant phoneme

Words sometimes wrongly identified as CVC

bow few saw her Why are these words not CVC words? Discuss.

Consonant digraphs
ll ss ff zz hill puff fizz sh ship ch th wh chat thin

ck ng qu x fox sing quick

CVC words clarifying some misunderstandings

pig ship sheep car

boy
fill song day whizz

cow
whip for miss huff

CVC words clarifying some misunderstandings

pig ship boy X chick car X cowX

fill
song day X whizz

whip
for X miss huff

ll ss ff zz ck
fill miss chick whizz huff

Why do these words end in double letters?

Examples of CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC and CCVCC

black ccv c
felt cvcc

s t r o ng cccv c
blank ccvcc

A segmenting activity

A segmenting activity

s s

A segmenting activity

s s

l l

A segmenting activity

s s

l l

A segmenting activity

s s

l l

A segmenting activity
Segment these words into their constituent phonemes: shelf dress think string sprint flick

Segmenting
WORD PHONEMES

shelf dress think string sprint flick

Segmenting
WORD PHONEMES

shelf dress think string sprint flick

sh d th s s f

e r i t p l

l e n r r i

f ss k i i ck ng n t

A basic principle
The same phoneme can be represented in more than one way:
burn first term heard work

/ae/

/ee/

/ie/

/oe/

/ue/

/oo/

/ow/

/oi/

/ar/

/au/

/ur/

/air/

/ear/

/n/

/j/

/r/

/s/

/e/

Sorting activity
field grow moon swarm learn bear grass

Word field grow moon swarm learn bear grass

Mistake /ie/ /ow/ /oo/ /ar/ /ear/ /ear/

regional pronunciation

A basic principle
meat he bear cow bread bed hear low

in more than one way

a e i o u oo ow oi ar or air eer

a-e e-e i-e o-e u-e u

oy a aw ear

ai ea ie oa ue oul ou

ay ee igh oe oo
ough

ey y y ow ew

eigh

ore are

a ear

ough

Reducing uncertainty Certain representations of a phoneme are more likely in initial, medial and final position in monosyllabic words.

1. The best bets for representing /ae/ at the beginning and in the middle of a word are a-e and ai. 2. The best bet for representing /ae/ at the end of a word is ay.

Spelling
There are patterns or regularities that help to determine choices or narrow possibilities for example for each vowel phoneme some digraphs and trigraphs are more frequently used before certain consonants than others. Children need to explore these patterns through word investigations. Staff need to understand these patterns in order to structure their teaching and design or select appropriate activities.

High frequency words

The majority of high frequency words are phonically regular. Some exceptions for example the and was should be directly taught.

Key message
The Rose Report recommended that whatever phonic programme is in use by the school, it should have a systematic progression with clear expectations by teachers and practitioners of the expected pace of teaching and learning.
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/rosereview/

To consider
What phonics programme is being used in our school? Have you been involved in any way? Have you spent any time discussing/ observing discrete phonics sessions? Have you delivered any parts of a session? How confident do you feel? What would you like to be covered in the next session?