Teaching Phonics

At Woodfields we have begun to use the Twinkl Phonics scheme to help support the children with their reading and writing.

Your child will be taught to read by sounding out words. This means saying the separate sounds in the word before saying the whole words. For example d-o-g dog.

In the English language there are 26 letters in the alphabet but letters can make different sounds so in total there are 44 possible sounds.

This video explains the process.

The 44 sounds are listed here:

https://www.dvusd.org/cms/lib/AZ01901092/Centricity/Domain/3795/Sound_Spelling_Chart.pdf

The sounds are taught in a set order.

At phase 1 children are taught sounds in the environment.

At phase 2 the letter sounds are introduced in this order: s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss.

At phase 3 the remainder of the sounds are taught along with 2 and 3 letter sounds:

j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu                                                                                                                                               

Then

ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo (book), oo (moon), ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

By phase 5 the children will know more of the different sounds these groups of letters can produce.

They will also be taught sounds that are split with a letter in between such as a and e making the long a sound in cake.

In addition to being taught the sounds and how to sound words out the children will also be
introduced to common words called ‘high frequency words.’ These words are often difficult to sound
out and useful to recognise by sight. The school can provide copies of these if you wish.

The phonics lessons will also teach the children how to spell and write the words.

To make the learning fun we will be using stories in class that feature a family.

The children will also be bringing home books from a scheme called Rhino Readers. It would be fantastic if you could share these with your child at home.

In class the children will practise their sounds using a series of fun worksheets and activities such as those pictured below.

Revision worksheets can be provided for you to use at home if you would like.