Phonics
Phonics Parent Meeting - 23rd April 2024
Phonics at Greswold
A key focus of our teaching is the development of phonic skills.
Our scheme for teaching phonics is Supersonic Phonic Friends which has been verified by the DfE. We use a wide range of engaging, active teaching methods and resources to deliver our lessons including games, videos and interactive whiteboard activities. We provide daily phonics sessions and implement effective interventions throughout the school day. We make full use of our expert teachers and teaching assistants to keep group sizes small. This allows for focused teaching which enables the most effective learning.
Meet the Characters
The characters support the children with different phonetical skills.
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Vocabulary
Word | Definition |
Phoneme | Phonemes are the smallest unit of speech-sounds which make up a word. There are around 44 phonemes in the English language. |
Grapheme | Graphemes are the written representation of sounds. A grapheme may be one letter (f), two letters (ir), three letters (igh) or four letters in length (ough). |
Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) | Knowing your GPCs means being able to hear a phoneme and knowing what grapheme to use to represent it. This is helpful for spelling. It also means seeing a grapheme and knowing the phoneme that relates to it, which is important for reading. |
Segmenting | Segmenting involves breaking up a word that you hear into its sounds. For example, the word jam is segmented into the sounds j-a-m. |
Blending | Blending involves merging the sounds in a word together in order to pronounce it. This is important for reading. For example, j-a-m blended together reads the word jam. |
Vowel | The letters a, e, i, o and u. |
Consonant | The letters of the alphabet (apart from the vowels a, e, i, o and u). |
Adjacent Consonants | Two or three consonants next to each other that represent different sounds. For example, bl in black. Notice here that bl makes the two different sounds b and l, whereas ck makes the single sound ck. |
Digraph | A grapheme made up of two letters that makes one sound (sh in shop). |
Consonant Digraph | A digraph that is made up of two consonants (sh in shop). |
Trigraph | A grapheme made up of three letters that makes one sound (igh in high). |
Split Digraph | A digraph that is split between a consonant (a-e in make). A split digraph usually changes the sound of the first vowel. For example, compare the pronunciation between man and made. |
CVC Words | A consonant-vowel-consonant word, such as cat, pin or top. |
CCVC Words | Consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant words such as clap and from. |
CVCC Words | Consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant words such as mask and belt. |
Tricky Words | Words that are commonly used in English, but they have spelling patterns which make them difficult to read and write using introductory phonic knowledge. For example, said, of and was. |
Common Exception Word | Common exception words are a group of words that are commonly used in text and spoken language but cannot be decoded using normal phonic rules. |
The Basics 2
The Basics 2 teaches children at least one spelling for 18 of the 44 sounds of the English language. Children will use their auditory processing and memory skills from Firm Foundations in Phonics 1 to start to recognise the spellings for the sound with Sam, segment and build with Seb and Bill, read and blend with Rex and Ben and write with Ron. They will learn the early concepts of Choose to Use with Suze for a handful of multiple spellings for sounds.
At the end of The Basics 2, children will be able to hear up to 3 sounds in words, recognise spellings and read and write simple CVC words with the 18 spellings for sounds. They will be able to read decodeable texts with The Basics 2 spellings and make phonetically plausible attempts in their emerging stages of spelling in their writing journey.
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The Basics 3
The Basics 3 teaches children the spellings for the further 26 of the 44 sounds of the English language. Children will use their auditory processing and memory skills from Firm Foundations in Phonics 1 and their Basics 2 skills to continue to recognise the spellings for the sound with Sam, segment and build with Seb and Bill, read and blend with Rex and Ben and write with Ron. They will continue to learn the early concepts of Choose to Use with Suze for some further multiple spellings for sounds and an introduction to Switch it with Mitch for alternative pronunciations of spellings for sounds. Children will learn their tricky words with Tess and read nonsense words with Nan.
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Higher Levels 5 - Choose to Use
The Higher Levels of Phonics – Choose to Use Spellings teaches children the concept that there are more than one spelling for a sound that they can hear in a word. With the help of Choose to Use Suze, they will find out all about ‘sounds the same but looks different’ and cool and not so cool choose to use spelling rules for up to 85 spellings for the 44 sounds of the English Language. With the help of Switch it Mitch, they will also find out all about ‘ looks the same, sounds different’ and switch it spelling sounds where one spelling can make up to 2 different sounds in words. Children will learn their tricky words with Tess and read nonsense words with Nan.
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Higher Levels 5 - Switch it Spell Sounds
The Higher Levels of Phonics – Switch it Spell Sounds teaches children the concept that there are more than one spelling for a sound that they can hear in a word. With the help of Choose to Use Suze, they will find out all about ‘sounds the same but looks different’ and cool and not so cool choose to use spelling rules for up to 85 spellings for the 44 sounds of the English Language. With the help of Switch it Mitch, they will also find out all about ‘ looks the same, sounds different’ and switch it spelling sounds where one spelling can make up to 2 different sounds in words. Children will learn their tricky words with Tess and read nonsense words with Nan.
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Prep for the Check
At the end of the Summer term all pupils in Year 1 will be assessed using a national phonic screening assessment to ascertain whether they have met the expected standard in reading or not. Any children who do not meet the expected level at the end of Year 1 will be re-assessed at the end of Year 2. Children need to be able to read 40 words, both real and non-real (pseudo) words in this assessment task.
Below we have some Supersonic practice papers!
The Basics 2 and 3 Prep for the Check | The Basics 3 Prep for the Check | The Basics 4 Prep for the Check | Higher Levels 5 Prep for the Check 1 | Higher Levels 5 Prep for the Check 2 | Higher Levels 5 Prep for the Check 3 |
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