Early Reading & Phonics

Phonics at Tattenhall Park

Intent

Every child deserves success right from the start. We know that the sooner children learn to read, the greater their success at school. This is why we put reading at the heart of what we do. At Tattenhall, we provide a rich reading environment which is underpinned by quality first teaching of phonics; our children learn to listen, speak and discriminate between sounds and our carefully sequenced approach allows children to become confident in segmenting, blending, and decoding words throughout each phonics phase. By doing so, we aim to develop confident, fluent and passionate readers and writers from an early stage.

Implementation

Tattenhall Park uses Read Write Inc by Oxford University Press to teach early phonics and reading. All children in Nursey, Reception, Year 1 and 2 take part in high quality, daily phonics lessons. Children in KS2, who need extra support, follow this programme too.

These fun sessions involve lots of speaking, listening and games where they emphasise on the children's participation. They learn to use their phonic knowledge for reading and writing. They develop an understanding that spoken words are made up of different sounds (phonemes) and they learn to match these phonemes to letters (graphemes).

Once children begin learning sounds they use this knowledge to read and spell words. Children can then see the purpose of learning sounds. For this reason, the first initial sounds that are taught following Read Write Inc are ‘m, a, s, d, t, i, n’. These can immediately be blended for reading to make simple CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) e.g. mat, sat, tin. Children then develop segmenting for writing skills; breaking the word into sounds to spell it out.

Children are taught to segment and blend.

Blending – Children blend phonemes together to make a word e.g. r-u-n run

Segmenting – Children split the word into sounds to help write it cat c-a-t.

What are speed sounds? In Read Write Inc phonics the individual sounds are called ‘speed sounds’ – because we want your son/daughter to read them effortlessly.

Fred Talk

We use pure sounds (‘m’ not’ muh’,’s’ not ‘suh’, etc.) so that your child will be able to blend the sounds into words more easily.

https://youtu.be/TkXcabDUg7Q

At school we use a puppet called Fred who is an expert on sounding out words! We call it, ‘Fred Talk’. E.g. m-o-p, c-a-t, m-a-n, sh-o-p, b-l-a-ck.

The following video is an example of blending sounds with Fred.

https://youtu.be/MNyFikwNQTg

The children are taught the sounds in 3 sets.

Step 1:

Set 1 Sounds are taught in the following order together with rhymes to help children form the letters correctly and instantly recognise sounds ready for blending.

Set 1
Sound	Rhyme
m	Maisie, mountain mountain
a	Round the apple, down the leaf
s	Slither down the snake
d	Round his bottom, up his tall neck, and down to his feet
t	Down the tower, across the tower
i	Down the body, dot for the head
n	Down Nobby and over his net
p	Down the plait and over the pirate's face
g	Round her face, down her hair and give her a curl
o	All around the orange
c	Curl around the caterpillar
k	Down the kangaroo's body, tail and leg
u	Down and under the umbrella, up to the top and down to the puddle
b	Down the laces, over the toe and touch the heel
f	Down the stem and draw the leaves
e	Lift off the top and scoop out the egg
l	Down the long leg
h	Down the head to the hooves and over his back
sh	Shhhh says the horse to the hissing snake Slither down the snake. Down the head to the hooves and over his back
r	Down his back, then curl over his arm
j	Down his body, curl and dot
v	Down a wing, up a wing
y	Down a horn, up a horn and under the yak's head.
w	Down, up, down, up
th	The princess in the tower is rescued by the horse Down the tower, across the tower. Down the head to the hooves and over his back
z	Zig-zag-zig
ch	The horse sneezes when the caterpillar's hairs get up his nose Curl around the caterpillar. Down the head to the hooves and over his back
qu	Round her head, up past her earrings and down her hair
x	Down the arm and leg and repeat on the other side
ng	A thing on a string
nk	I think I stink

Please do not use letter names at this early stage.

Children will also use pictures for each sound to help recognise the sound and then form the shape of the sound.

Step 2:

The children are then taught Set 2 Sounds - the long vowels. When they are very confident with all of set 1 and 2 they are taught Set 3 Sounds.

Long vowel sound	Set 2 Speed Sound cards Teach these first	Set 3 Speed Sound cards
ay	ay: may I play	a-e: make a cake	ai: snail in the rain
ee	ee: what can you see	ea: cup of tea	e: he me we she be
igh	igh: fly high	i-e: nice smile
ow	ow: blow the snow	o-e: phone home	ao: goat in a boat
oo	oo: poo at the zoo	u-e: huge brute	ew: chew the stew
oo	oo: look at a book
ar	ar: start the car
or	or: shut the door	aw: yawn at dawn
air	air: that’s not fair	are: share and care
ir	ir: whirl and twirl	ur: nurse for a purse	er: a better letter
ou	ou: shout it out	ow: brown cow
oy	oy: toy for a boy	oi: spoil the boy
ire		ire: fire fire!
ear		ear: hear with your ear
ure		ure: sure it’s pure?

Nonsense words (Alien words)

As well as learning to read and blend real words children will have plenty of opportunities to apply their sound recognition skills on reading ‘Nonsense words’. These words will also feature heavily in the Year One Phonics Screening check in the summer term.

Step 3:

Children will be introduced to ‘Ditty books’ when they successfully begin to read single words. The short vowels should be kept short and sharp:

Children use sound-blending (Fred Talk) to read short ditties. Children will then be challenged to use their developing phonic knowledge to write short sentences.

Within all the books children will have red and green words to learn to help them to become speedy readers. Red words are words that are not easily decodable and challenge words to extend children’s vocabulary. Green words are linked to the sounds they have been learning and are easily decodable.

Dots and dashes represent the sound each letter makes. Dots represent a single phoneme and a dash represents a digraph (two letters that make one sound) / trigraph (three letters that make one sound).

As the children progress through the sound sets, they will read books that consolidate and embed their ongoing phonological knowledge. The RWInc story books will be read during a phonics lesson or during guided reading. Each child will be sent home with a reading book that also matches their current phonological knowledge.

Once the children have completed the phonics programme, they will continue to have daily reading lessons. We will follow 'Steps to Read', which builds reading fluency and works on developing comprehension skills. In Reception and KS1 children have daily Storytime. High quality texts are chosen to ensure that children a wide reading diet and a range of diverse themes are discussed. The sessions use the 'Talk Through Stories' structure suggested by Read Write Inc and early comprehension skills are developed through these carefully planned Storytime sessions. Please see 'Our Favourite Five' booklists attached below.

Impact

For children to make the best possible progress, they will read Storybooks closely matched to their reading level, every day. This means we group children by their word reading and fluency – not by their progress in comprehension or writing, or by their age. Every half-term, we assess all children who are on the phonics programme. The Reading Leader carries out all the online assessments to ensure children are placed in the correct group. We track each child’s individual progress on the online assessment tracker. We use this to identify children who need more support through one-to-one tutoring.

We have high expectations for our children to meet the expected standard in the Phonic Screening Check and help all children to be accurate and fluent readers by the time they enter Key Stage 2.

Useful Websites

Phonics Play - https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk

Phonics Bloom - https://www.phonicsbloom.com

RWI - https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/read-write-inc-phonics-guide/

Cbeebies / Alphablocks - https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

Teach your monster to read - https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com

Oxford Owl - https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk

Scholastic - https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html

ICT games Literacy - https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/literacy.html

BBC Bitesize - https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zgkw2hv