Phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by linking sounds and the symbols that represent them. The English alphabet has 26 letters, but they actually make 44 different sounds (phonemes). There are over 150 different ways that these are represented (graphemes)!

Don’t panic, we will cover the graphemes which are used most often in a progressive programme called: Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS).

It is a complete Programme which is designed to teach children how to read through the act of decoding and blending and is validated by the Department for Education. It teaches children the link between the sounds of our language (phonemes) and the written representation of these sounds (graphemes), or the spellings of the sounds contained within the English language.

Essential Letters and Sounds at JRS...

is delivered to the whole class
is rigorous and engaging
supports teachers to ensure children keep up rather than catch up
aligns with books from Oxford University Press
provides immediate, in the lesson intervention

Please see the video below for an introduction to the programme:

Phonics at JRS

Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of FS2 and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently.

Throughout the day, children will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and as a class.

Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the school to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.

We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover.

Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support each child’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.

We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs ‘sh’ (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).

We teach children to:

• Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently

• Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.

The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.

ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.

How can you help at home?

Supporting Reading at Home:

Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.
We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound)
We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:

Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.

Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.

Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please click here to watch a video on how to accurately pronounce these sounds. Please click here to watch a video on how to accurately blend sounds to read words.

ELS Resources to help at home

Parent Presentation.mp4

Parent Presentation.pdf

Grapheme-Sheet-Phase-2 1.pdf