Phonics & Early Reading at Whitehill
How phonics is taught at Whitehill Primary and Nursery School
Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write by developing their phonemic awareness the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate different sounds used in the English language. Children learn the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. At Whitehill Primary and Nursery School we place a strong emphasis on the teaching of phonics in the early years of reading and writing, in order to give all children a solid foundation for learning.
The teaching of phonics takes place through structured and clearly sequenced daily teaching of Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) lessons and activities. This begins in Nursery and Reception, using the validated phonics scheme Jolly Phonics. Sounds are introduced at the rate of 3-5 per week throughout the Autumn and Spring, with children consolidating these in the Summer term. In Years 1 and 2, the children learn alternative spellings of the previously learned sounds, refining their knowledge to become more fluid readers and accurate spellers.
Phonics sessions are organised around the revision of previously learned letter-sound correspondence, learning of new ones, practicing these and then applying them in sentence level work. Because not all words in the English language comply with the rules of phonics, we also teach so-called ‘tricky words’ by repetition and retrieval.
Our Jolly Phonics scheme incorporates phonetically decodable texts that children can access once they are taught the related phonemes. This feeds into our school book bands, which are matched closely to these and run parallel to them.
We use regular formative assessments to identify any children who have a possible gap in their phonics knowledge, addressing these immediately to ensure that all pupils make the best possible progress. For those children who are not yet able to pass the phonics check or who fall behind receive focussed support to help them succeed. We also run catch-up programmes to help those pupils who require phonics support beyond Year 2.
Please click on the heading below to learn about the statutory testing of phonics that takes place in Year 1:
Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
All children in year 1 take part in the statutory national Phonics Screening check during the Summer term. The check is a booklet containing 40 words, which the child reads one to one with their class teacher. These words are a mixture of real words and nonsense words, which the children often refer to as 'alien words'. The screening has been designed to check that each child has developed the expect level of phonic knowledge for their year group. The children do not need to be able to identify which words are real and which are not, though the presence of an alien image beside the nonsense words means that most children can!
The screening checks that each child can:
- Sound out and blend graphemes in order to read simple words e.g. n-igh-t.
- Read phonically decodable one-syllable and two-syllable words, e.g. cat, sand, windmill.
Please ensure that your child is in school during this week.
The Steps that Children Need to Master to be able to Read and Write
There are six steps that the children will need to master to be able to read and write. Click on the different phases below to learn more:
Phase 1
Letters and Sounds: Information for Parents Children learn a great deal from other people. As parents and carers you are your child’s first teachers. You have a powerful influence on your child’s early learning. From a very early age your child will need to experience a wide range of activities and experiences (for example, singing and saying rhymes, making and listening to music, listening to them and joining in conversations, painting and pretend play) to develop their early reading and writing skills. These activities will help your child take the first important steps towards reading and writing.
Phase 1 of a teaching programme called Letters and Sounds is used to support the teaching of Language and Literacy, before moving onto the Jolly Phonics Programme.
Our children learn through lots of play and activities and are encouraged to use their increasing phonics knowledge in freely chosen activities. If you can be involved in helping your child, we know it can make a big difference to your child’s learning. Below is further information about Phase 1 of the Letters and Sounds programme and the best ways to support your child’s learning at home.
Letters and Sounds – Phase 1 In this ongoing phase, your child will be learning to:
- have fun with sounds
- listen carefully
- develop their vocabulary
- speak confidently to you, other adults and other children
- tune into sounds
- listen and remember sounds
- talk about sounds
- understand that spoken words are made up of different sounds.
Phase 1 consists of seven interlinking parts
- environmental sounds • instrumental sounds
- body percussion • rhythm and rhyme
- alliteration (words that begin with the same sound)
- voice sounds
- oral blending and segmenting
You can help your child develop in each of these by trying some of the ideas below. Remember that all these activities should be fun and interactive. Give your child lots of encouragement and cuddles as you play together. Smiles and praise will help develop a sense of achievement and build confidence. The emphasis is on developing the ability to distinguish sounds and create sounds.
|
Ways to support your children at home: environmental sounds. • Go on a listening walk. When walking down the road, make a point of listening to different sounds: cars revving, people talking, birds singing, dogs barking. When you get home, try to remember all the sounds you heard. You could try taping the sounds, to listen to them again, or try reproducing them yourselves, using your voices or instruments. • Make sounds, using a range of props, such as running a stick along a fence or tapping the bin lid. • Invent a secret family ‘knock’ for entering rooms. • Play ‘sound lotto’. A commercial version of this can be purchased from many children’s toy shops, but making your own, from your sound walk, would be far more rewarding. |
|
Ways to support your children at home: instrumental sounds • Make your own musical instruments, using cardboard rolls, tins, dried peas, beans, stones. Shake these loudly, softly, as you are marching, skipping or stomping. Play ‘Guess what’s inside the instrument’. • Sing known songs loudly and then softly, stretch words in known songs and add new words or sounds. • Listen to a range of music with your child, from rap to classical. Encourage your child to move in response to the variety of musical styles and moods. |
|
Ways to support your children at home: body percussion. • Learn some action rhymes, such as ‘Wind the bobbin up’. • Play some commercially produced CDs. Clap along with familiar rhymes and learn new ones. • Listen to the sounds your feet make when walking, running or skipping: slowly, softly, fast, stomping hard, in flipflops, boots, high heels. • Try different types of clapping: clap your hands softly, quickly and make a pattern for your child to follow. Do the same clapping your thighs or stamping your feet. Tap your fingers. Click your tongue. • Invent a special family clap routine for when someone does something really well. |
|
Ways to support your children at home: rhythm and rhyme. • Get into the rhythm of language: bounce your child on your knee to the rhythm of a song or nursery rhyme; march or clap to a chant or poem. • Help your child move to the rhythm of a song or rhyme . • Read or say poems, songs, nursery songs and rhyming stories as often as you can. Try to use gestures, tap regular beats and pause to emphasise the rhythm of the piece. • Add percussion to mark the beats using your hands, feet or instruments. Try out some rhythmic chanting such as ‘two, four, six, eight, hurry up or we’ll be late’ or ‘bip bop boo, who are you?’ |
|
Ways to support your children at home: alliteration (words that begin with the same sound). • Alliteration is a lot of fun to play around with. Your child’s name can be a good place to start, for example, say: ‘Gurpeet get the giggles’, ‘Carl caught a cat’, ‘Jolly Jessie jumped’. Encourage other family members to have a go, for example: ‘Mummy munches muffins’, ‘Daddy is doing the dishes’. • Emphasise alliteration in songs and stories, for example: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’. ¬ Play around with familiar song , such as ‘Old MacDonald had some sheep, shoes, shorts, with a sh sh here and and sh sh there’, to emphasise alliteration. • Identify the odd one out, for example, cat, cup, boy, car. ¬ Make up little nonsense stories together using lots of alliteration ¬ Collect items that start with the same sound from the park, the garden and around the house. ¬ When shopping, think about items you are buying and say: ‘a tall tin of tomatoes’, ‘a lovely little lemon’. Encourage your child to do the same. |
|
Ways to support your children at home: voice sounds. • Repeat your child’s vocalisations. • Make fun noises and nonsense words. • Say words in different ways (fast, slowly, high, low, using a funny voice) • ‘Sing’ known songs using only sounds (for example, ‘la, la, la’) and ask your child to guess the song. • Vary your tempo and pitch when reading stories. |
|
Ways to support your children at home: oral blending and segmenting. This is all oral (spoken). Your child will not be expected to match the letter to the sound at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds. Oral blending and segmenting is a later skill that will be important when the time comes for your child to read and write. Being able to hear the separate sounds within a word and then blend them together to understand that word is really important. Blending is a vital skill for reading. The separate sounds (phonemes) of the word are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word and are then merged together into the whole word. This merging is called blending. For example, the adult would say c-a-t = cat. Segmenting is a vital skill for spelling. The whole word is spoken aloud, then broken up into its separate sounds (phonemes) in order, all through the word. For example, the adult would say cat = c-a-t. |
Phase 2 Phonics Information
In phase 2 phonics children learn the sounds of 19 sounds, building on oral blending and segmenting skills from phase 1.
-
What is Phase 2?Phase 2 phonics builds upon the foundation of Phase 1, introducing children to the sounds that letters make (phonemes).
-
Focus of Phase 2:The main focus is on learning 19 of the most common single-letter sounds, often grouped into sets to make learning easier.Reading Simple Words:Once children learn the sounds, they are taught to read simple words containing those sounds, like "cat", "dog", "pen" (CVC words) and "am", "on", "it" (VC words).
-
What to expect:Children will learn to blend (put sounds together) and segment (break words into sounds) to read and write.Phase 2 will be taught in the second week in Reception.
-
-
Phase 3
In Phase 3 phonics, children are introduced to more complex graphemes (letter combinations) like digraph ( two letters making one sound) and trigraphs (three letters making one sound), including sounds like / ch/, /sh/, th/, and /ng alongside high frequency words and two- syllable words. Here's a more detailed explanation- Focus: Phase 3 builds on the skills learned in Phases 1 and 2, focusing on blending and segmenting words with more complex graphemes. New Graphemes: Children learn around 25 new graphemes, including digraphs and trigraphs like:/ch/ (as in "chair")/sh/ (as in "ship")
/th/ (as in "thin")
/ng/ (as in "sing")
/ai/ (as in "rain")
/ee/ (as in "see")
/igh/ (as in "high")
/oa/ (as in "boat")
/oo/ (as in "moon")
/ar/ (as in "car")
/or/ (as in "fork")
/ur/ (as in "bird")
/ow/ (as in "cow")
/oi/ (as in "coin")
/ear/ (as in "ear")
/air/ (as in "chair")
/ure/ (as in "pure")
/er/ (as in "her")
Phase 4
Phase 4 is focussed on applying the sounds taught in previous phases.
When children start Phase 4 of the phonics programme, they will know a grapheme for each of the 42 phonemes. They will be able to blend phonemes to read CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, and segment in order to spell them.
Children will also have begun reading straightforward two-syllable words and simple captions, as well as reading and spelling some tricky words.
In Phase 4, no new graphemes are introduced. The main aim of this phase is to consolidate the children’s knowledge and to help them learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants, such as trap, string and milk.
Below are some materials to support please click on the blue link:CVCC words using phase 3 graphemes/ Phase 4.
Polysyllabic words Phase 4
CVC and CCVC words phase 4
Phase 5
In Phase 5 phonics, your child will learn more complex sounds and spellings, including digraphs and alternative spellings, enabling them to read and spell a wider range of words with greater fluency and accuracy.
What to Expect in Phase 5:
- New Sounds and Spellings: Children will learn new graphemes (letters or groups of letters that represent a sound) and alternative spellings for sounds they already know.
- Digraphs and Trigraphs: They'll encounter digraphs (two letters making one sound, like "oo" in "moon") and trigraphs (three letters making one sound, like "igh" in "high")
- Split Digraphs: They'll learn about split digraphs, where a letter is placed between two letters that make a sound (e.g., "o" in "bone").
- High-Frequency Words: Continue to work on recognizing and spelling common high-frequency words.
- Reading and Spelling: Children will use their phonics knowledge to read and spell unfamiliar words with up to three syllables.
- Correct Letter Formation: They'll continue to practice and refine their letter formation skills. Resources to support phase 5
Phonics Screening Check Year 1 &2
Phonics Screening Check
The Year 1 phonics screening check is not a formal test, but a way for teachers to ensure that children are making sufficient progress with their phonics skills to read words and that they are on track to become fluent readers who can enjoy reading for pleasure and for learning.
We already have detailed assessments of your child's phonics ability so this will not tell us anything new but is a check to ensure that your child is working at a nationally agreed age appropriate standard.
The phonics screening check for current year 1's will take place June 2025.
What is the phonics screening check?
Phonics Screening Parent Information
Phonics terminology: A glossary of
We thought it would be a really good idea to share the terminology that is used by the teachers and children (they are amazing with this vocabulary) in phonics sessions and when reading/ writing. We hope that you find this useful.
Phoneme The smallest unit of sound in a word. There are approximately 44 phonemes in English (it depends on different accents). Phonemes can be put together to make words.
Grapheme A way of writing down a phoneme. This could be one letter or a group of letters (i, ie, igh, i_e)
Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence (GPC) It is the relationship between sounds and the letter, or letters, that represent that sound. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa.
Oral Blending This involves hearing phonemes and being able to merge them together to make a word. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to blend written words.
Blending This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading.
Oral Segmenting This is the act hearing a whole word and then splitting it up into the phonemes that make it. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to segment words to spell them.
Segmenting This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling.
Digraph Two letters that work together to make one sound (e.g. ee)
Trigraph Three letters that work together to make one sound (e.g. igh)
Tricky words
"Tricky words" are common English words that don't follow typical phonetic rules, meaning they can't be easily sounded out and require memorisation for reading and spelling.
Tricky word song Phase 2 and 3 Tricky words (song) phase 4Dinosaur Tricky word song Phase 2 Dinosaur tricky word song phaseHow to say the phonemes (sounds)
1: Phase 2 PhonemesNo new phonemes are taught in phase 4. Phase 4 is consolidation of previous taught phonemes. (See phase 4 for more information)
Lessons to support.
Here are lessons to support your child at home, Click on the link below:
Review of i,n,m,d sounds/ phonemes
Part 1 Learn to read g Part 2 learn to read
Part 1 learn to read o Part 2 Lean to read
Learn to read c Part 2 Learn to read words
Learn to read K Part 2 learn to read
Review g,o,c,k Part 2 learn to read
er sound/ phoneme
Mr Thorne Does Phonics HD - Alphabet Series
Reading longer words click the link below for lessons on reading.
Blending ( putting the letters together to make words)
Games and resources to support phonics and reading
Robot talk -
Words are made up from sounds and children need to be able to hear these sounds individually. Sometimes when you are playing you can say words as if you were a robot (saying the sounds separately) and see if your child can work out what you are saying. Stick to short simple words that only have a few sounds in them. Make sure you are saying the letter sounds (p-i-g) not the letter names (pee-eye-gee).
E.g.
- Pass that p-i-g to me.
- Sit d-ow-n.
- Point to your t-ee-th.
- Hop like a f-r-o-g.
As your child becomes familiar with this robot talking, see if they can say words in robot talk themselves?
I spy – Say the rhyme ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with ______’ allow your child plenty of opportunities to guess what you have chosen, for example, ‘something beginning with t’ could be a tree, toy, tent or train. Try using the sound instead of a letter, for example “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ch”
Point out text everywhere - Talk about the written words you see in the world around you. Ask your child to find familiar words on each outing such as ‘McDonalds’, ‘Coke’ or ‘Asda’.
Playing with words – Encourage your child to sound out the word as you change it from mat to fat to sat; from sat to sag to sap; and from sap to sip. Try using made up words too!
Letter sound Bingo/Noughts and Crosses
You will need:
- 3x3 grid for each player
- counters or coins
Write some letters into the spaces on each card, making each card slightly different. The ‘bingo caller’ says each letter in turn and the players cover the letter up. The winner is first to fill their board. To make this game easier for new readers, show them the letter for them to match. You could make it more challenging by using tricky words from your child’s reading book.
Matching pairs/Snap – Choose several words your child is learning to read. Write each word twice on separate pieces of paper/card so you can search for a matching pair. Turn all the cards face down on the table and take turns to turn over two. When a matching pair is found that player can keep them. The winner is the person with the most pairs at the end of the game. You can use the same cards to play other games like snap.
Be your child's number 1 fan - Ask your child to read aloud what he or she has written at school or for their homework. Be an enthusiastic listener.
Create a book together - Fold pieces of paper in half and staple them to make a book. Ask your child to write sentences on each page and add his or her own illustrations.
Make up stories on the go - Take turns adding to a story the two of you make up while in the car or bus. Try making the story funny or spooky.
Stop, Banana! – Write out tricky words onto separate cards. Draw a banana on another card. Shuffle the pack and ask your child to guess how many words they will be able to read before the banana comes out. Keep trying to beat the record!
Obb and Bob - Real word and alien word game.
Free Online Reading books -Click on the link to access.
I hope this provides some useful information and ways in which you can support your child in his or her exciting journey along the road to reading and writing.