Teaching Early Reading & Writing
Phonics is a way of teaching children to read and write by blending and segmenting individual sounds. Every letter and different combination of letters make particular sounds e.g. ‘s’ makes a hissing sound like a snake.
Phonics is essential for children to become successful readers, spellers and writers in the Early Years of schooling and beyond. Our Phonics teaching begins in Pre-School and continues through to Year 1 with a further program of Phonics Intervention for children that require additional support into Year 2 and Key Stage 2
At North Wingfield Primary School & Nursery Academy we use the DfE approved Monster Phonics scheme of work for teaching and learning phonics.
Vocabulary
Phoneme – a single unit of sound
Digraph – two letters that make one sound (e.g. sh, ch, ai)
Trigraph – three letters that make one sound (e.g. igh, ear, air, ure)
Split Diagraph – two letters make one sound but have been split apart by one letter (e.g. a – e in lake)
Grapheme – a written letter or group of letters that represent a sound
Consonants – b, c, d, f, g, h, j, j, k, l ,m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z
Vowels – a, e, i, o, u (sometimes y)
Blend – to put or merge the sounds together to make the word (e.g. the sounds in c-a-t are blended to read the word cat)
Segment – to break down the word into its individual sounds to spell (e.g. cat can be split to the sounds c-a-t)
Supporting at Home
- Share books every night at home with your child – including reading for pleasure books
- Play Phonic Games
- Practise Phonics Sounds regularly
- Practise reading and writing High Frequency Words
- Listen to your child read their Monster Phonics book every night
- Provide opportunities for your child to write at home e.g shopping lists
