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Phonics information

Please find some useful information on how to support your child with Phonics and Reading at home.

We hope this information will help you to support your child in further developing these important skills. 

Please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Rogers, Mrs Scarfe or Mrs Inman (English Leaders) or your class teacher if you would like any further support. 

Phonics and Early Reading Parents and Carers Meeting
Flashcards
Rocket Phonics | The English Alphabetic Code | A guide for parents, carers and families

This short video for parents, carers and families explains what the English alphabetic code is and how we teach it through the Rocket Phonics SSP programme.

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Technical Vocabulary Explained:
  • Phoneme: the smallest unit of sound. There are 44 phonemes in English. Phonemes can be put together to make words.
  • Grapheme: way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. tch or 4 letters e.g ough
  • Digraph: a grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme). 
  • Trigraph: a grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).
  • GPC: grapheme-phoneme correspondence
  • Blending: 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: 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: 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.
Phonics Screening information for Parents

In Year 1, during the month of June, all children are required to sit the statutory Phonics Screener check. Children will be shown a mixture of real words and alien words, containing a mixture of phase 3 and phase 5 sounds. Your child will be asked to read the word, which they can either sound-out and blend or just read. Children either pass or don't pass the test. Children who don't pass the test, are given the opportunity to re-sit the test during the Summer Term of Year 2.Below, is a PowerPoint which explains a bit more about the test.

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