Phonics
What is Phonics?
Children are taught to read by breaking down words into separate sounds or ‘phonemes’. They are then taught how to blend these sounds together to read the whole word. Children have a 25 - 30 minute phonics lesson each day and they are encouraged to use these strategies to read and write in other lessons. There are around 40 different sounds. At Charlotte School we use the scheme Song of Sounds, we find our children really success using songs to learn sounds. Obviously, we tailor our teaching to the needs of our children but we use this document as our starting point.
More information can be found on their website:
https://www.songofsounds.co.uk/
Phonics Vocabulary Help
- Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound. Phonemes can be put together to make words.
- Grapheme – A way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. ch, 3 letters e.g. igh or 4 letters e.g. tion.
- GPC – Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence. The skill of being able to match the written representation to the sound that they hear.
- Digraph – A grapheme containing two letters that make just one sound – th, sh, ch, ay, ee, ie, ou, ow
- Split digraph – A vowel grapheme containing two letters but which allow a letter to stand between them. This does not stop the two letters still making their sound – a-e make, i-e bike, o-e bone, u-e tune
- Trigraph – A grapheme containing three letters that make just one sound – igh, ear, ure, air, tch, are, ore
- Blending – This involves looking at the written word, looking at each grapheme using their knowledge of GPCs in order to match to the phoneme and merge together to read the word.
- Segmenting – This involves hearing a word and splitting it in to individual phonemes by sounding it out. Again using knowledge of GPCs will allow children to make written representations of each sound allowing them to spell the word.
Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
Every Year 1 child in the country will be taking the phonics screening check in the same week in June. The children will be checked on their ability to segment and blend both real and nonsense/alien words. Miss Jenkins and Miss Pitman will carry out all the phonics checks with the Year 1 and Year 2 children. The check is very similar to tasks the children already complete during phonics lessons. Children will be asked to ‘sound out’ a word and blend the sounds together. Eg d-o-g -> dog ch-ai-n -> chain
The focus of the check is to see which sounds the children know and therefore the children will be asked to read made up ‘nonsense’ words.
Last year the children were required to score 32 or above out of 40 to pass. If your child doesn’t attain the score then they are required to re-take the check in Year 2
The Phonics Check will be completed the week beginning Monday 9th June 2025
Please ensure your child is in school that week.
Real and Alien word practise booklets
The Year 1 children and those retaking the check in Year 2 will be bringing home a phonic check booklet. Please help your child to practise the real and alien words by segmenting and blending, using their robot arms. Your child will be given another booklet in Summer Term 1 and 2.