Phonics and Spelling
Phonics @ Penwortham
At Penwortham, we teach phonics using the Sounds-Write programme throughout the school. It is a structured phonics programme that we currently use daily for whole class phonics sessions and catch up interventions.
It teaches the three essential skills of:
- Segmenting - breaking a word into sounds;
- Blending – putting sounds together to make a word;
- Phoneme manipulation - swapping a sound in a word to make a different word e. mat, pat, cat.
To become a fluent reader and speller, a child needs to grasp 4 areas of conceptual understanding.
- Letters are symbols that represent sounds.
- Each sound may be spelt with one or more letters.
- Sounds may be written in more than one way.
e.g. mail, tray, cake, great have the same sound /ae/ however it is spelt differently.
- Many spellings can be used for one sound.
In KS1, children build onto this skill by learning that words may have similar sounds but are spelt differently.
For example:
snow coat so home toe
Activities included are reading materials such as the example below.
Children read the text and find the different spellings of sounds taught in a lesson, such as rainy, Kate etc
Tips for parents:
- It is very important to say the letter sound and not the letter name.
- Write letters in lower case and not capitals.
- Start with words known as CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant e.g. mat).
- To progress onto CVCC (went) CCVC (tram)
https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-84-downloads-links-for-parents-teachers.aspx
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/3-5-years/letters-and-sounds