Reading & Phonics

Reading & Phonics

Phonics is the way we teach children to recognise the sounds in words. It is crucial to your child’s success later on in reading and writing. Children in Key Stage 1 have daily phonics lessons in school to support their reading to decode words they have not come across before.

At home, it is vital that these skills are still being practised and built upon daily and where possible. For both reception classes and Year 1 there is a daily phonics zoom to support the phase they are learning. For Year 2, the phonics phase we are on links closely to spellings and recognising alternative sounds for one spelling.

Each day we start by practising the sounds we know. The videos below show the sounds. Please be aware your child may not have been taught all of these sounds yet.

Reception; recap of phase 2, moving to phase 3

Year 1 – Phase 5

Year 2- Recap phase 5, moving to Phase 6.

R, YR 1: Video link showing the sounds with sound cards;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6OiU2h3sUI

YR2 practice; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMSvBplxgfo

If you’re not sure which lessons your child should watch or your child finds the lessons too difficult, then please contact your child’s class teacher. The easiest way to practise phonics is to use the sound in different words. Write it out for your child on a piece of paper. Get them to write ‘sound buttons’ underneath like so;

shock

• • •

Here you can see this word has 3 sounds. Say the sounds individually and then blend to say the word. Remind your child of how many sounds and ask them to write this down. Show them the word if they are unable to do this independently- it is okay to copy for them to learn the way we write the word.

You can make up ‘alien’ or nonsense words for them to identify which are real or fake;