Literacy is brilliant!

Tricky word challenge!

4-5 Sessions a week

Reading.
Writing.
Speaking and Listening.
 A unit lasts 2-3 weeks and focuses on a text
type, e.g. poetry, narrative or non- fiction.

Talk is vital!
 Getting children to be confident about expressing
the opinions loudly and clearly is a huge part of
Literacy.
Ask them to suspend
disbelief and step into a
whole new world.

Education is not filling a

bucket but lighting a fire
W.B. Yeats
We dont believe in lids

we believe in challenge!

All our Literacy sessions are taught in a challenging and

open ended way so that pupils always have the opportunity
to exceed expectations.
 Guided Reading
An opportunity to.

Assess the children.

Develop their technical reading skills.
Develop their comprehension skills.

See the school website (on handout) for an

example of this.
 What is phonics?
We teach these two main skills

Term Meaning

To segment To split a word into its separate

sounds, as an aid to spelling.
To blend To list the sounds within a word and
put together quickly to form the
word. (Taught as a strategy for
reading unknown words.)

b oa - t

Virginia Bridge / Phonics glossary / August 2000

 At a glance, phonics is.
Skills of oral Knowledge
and written of the
blending and letters,
segmenting. digraphs
and
trigraphs.
And tricky words of course!
These are the basic skills needed for reading and writing.
Term Meaning Examples

Phoneme The smallest unit of sound that you c/a/t = 3 phonemes

can hear within a word. The word th/e/n = 3 phonemes
phoneme refers to the sound , NOT ch/air = 2 phonemes
the letter(s) which represent the
sound in writing. w/e/n/t = 4 phonemes

Grapheme The written representation of a c/a/t = 3 graphemes

phoneme. th/e/n = 3 graphemes
ch/air = 2 graphemes
w/e/n/t = 4 graphemes

A phoneme you hear and a grapheme you see

A word always has the same number of phonemes as graphemes.

 Sounds of English
44 sounds or phonemes
Pure sounds, the letter m is
mmm not muh.
mst instead of must.

The school website has a video that

demonstrates the correct articulation of all
these phonemes.
Jolly Phonics and Letters and Sounds
Phase 1
Oral blending and segmenting: Hearing and
saying sounds in words before learning to read
and write them.

Phase 2
Phase 3 Digraphs (Phonemes or graphemes made up of two or
more letters)
 Phase 4
Initial and final consonant clusters, e.g.
free or went.

Phase 5
Alternative spellings and pronounciations of
previously learnt phonemes and graphemes.
To make it a bit clearer for you..!

/ai/ pain, day, gate, station

sweet, heat, thief,
/ee/
these
tried, light, my, shine,
/ie/
mind
/oa/ road, blow, bone, cold
moon, blue, grew,
/oo/
tune
 Phase Six
Past tense, adding suffixes, e.g. ly, ful
ness and spelling of more complex
words.
Children need the opportunity to apply their
phonic knowledge independently.
Mistakes
arent a
problem,
theyre a
challenge!

Self assessment is key!

Bear this in mind when supporting children with home learning. Copying doesnt help!
Children also need a bank of common words they can spell correctly from memory.
The tricky words. E.g. sed should be said.
In Year Two and later on in Year One, children are expected to use dictionaries or word
mats to help them spell less common words that arent phonetic as well as using the
Phase 5 mat to choose alternative spellings.

2b

2b

1b
 Activity!
WALT: understand how children use their phonics
to help them spell.
Watch the video clip. With a friend, write down some
adjectives to describe what you see and feel.

CATCH! You can only use the graphemes taught in

Phase Two and Three, e.g. carm instead of calm and
byootifull instead of beautiful (use the mats on your
sheet as a guide).
 Lets hear it for the boys!
The gender gap is narrowing but there is still a lot to do.
Outdoor writing clipboards are great!
Comics.
ICT! (see handout for websites).
Toy Story pens and pencils.
Treasure hunts!
Shopping lists, letters, posters, labels children love writing for a
purpose!
Silly sentences.
Kung Fu Punctuation.
Calling all Dads, uncles, big brothers etc! Your school needs you!