Phonics

The early stages of children learning to read can be daunting for many parents, with lots of phonics jargon being used by professionals in school. Our aim is to support all parents to feel confident when helping their child to practise their new reading skills at home. We hope you find the information below helpful, but if you have any questions please speak to your child’s class teacher or Mrs Nightingale, Assistant Headteacher, who will be happy to help.

Contents

How we teach phonics at Winton

Terminology

Floppy’s Phonics Characters

Resources 

 – Floppy’s Phonics Online

– Alphabet Code Chart

– Sound mats

How we teach phonics at Winton Primary School

At Winton Primary School, we follow Floppy’s Phonics, a systematic synthetic phonics teaching programme for early reading and writing. We use the interactive phonics lessons and activities to teach children the sounds in words and the code (letters) used to represent them. Children in Reception and Year 1 will take part in a daily phonics lesson. Each lesson begins by rapidly revisiting previously taught sounds and codes before being taught the next new sound. They will use the Floppy’s Phonics Sound Books to look for words which contain this new sound and discuss the meaning of any new vocabulary. They will practise forming the new code, reading words and sentences which contain it and complete spelling games too. This learning will transfer into their daily reading so children can apply and consolidate the new sound and code.

Terminology

Grapheme – The letter or letter group which is code for the sound.

Phoneme – The smallest identifiable sound of speech.

Blending – When reading a word, identify the graphemes in the word and say the corresponding sounds in order to hear the word as a whole. E.g. read sh – o – p = shop

Segmenting – When spelling a word, break it down into the sounds you hear and write the grapheme for each identified sound. E.g. say shop = writing sh – o – p

Decode – Breaking a word down into sounds to be able to read it.

Encode – Breaking a word down into sounds to be able to spell it.

Digraph – When two letters make one sound when they are together. E.g. boat

Trigraph – When three letters make one sound when they are together. E.g. night

Split digraph – When two letters that are “split” by having another letter in the middle of them. E.g.  a_e in game or i_e in tide.

Tricky words – These are common or high frequency words with unusual spelling rules which means they can’t be decoded easily. Children will learn to recognise these words by sight.

Floppy’s Phonics Characters

This is the Robinson family. You may recognise them from Oxford Reading Tree books you have read and they are also in all our Floppy’s Phonics Sound Books.

Family and friends who join in with the fun.

Resources

Below are some resources to help you support your children with early reading and writing at home. Floppy’s Phonics is taught in blocks, level 1 – 5, throughout Reception and Year 1. You will be able to find your child’s current level in their home learning book, but if you would like support, please speak to the class teacher.

Floppy’s Phonics Online

You can access the Floppy’s Phonics sound books online through the Oxford Owl website. Login (oxfordowl.co.uk) Your child has their class login for this in their home school diary. Once you have logged in, you will see a tab for the Floppy’s Phonics resources.

Click on this tab to see all the sound books. You can filter these to the level your child is currently working on, or revisit previously taught sounds to recap learning.

Each book contains 3 or 4 sounds; a double page per sound. You can access word lists to decode together, a picture with sound buttons and other spelling and reading games by clicking on the icons on the page.

Alphabet Code Chart

It is important that children can recognise the letter shapes for upper and lower-case letters and that they see these pairs together to understand that they are both code for the same sound.

Sound Mats

The sound mats below can also be found in your child’s home school diary.

Level 1

At this level, children listen to sounds in the environment. There are Floppy’s Phonics books to support this stage online; At the Farm, At Home, Fun at School, Out in Town, At the Park, At the Match.

Level 1+ 

Sound Books 1- 6


Tricky and Helpful Words


Level 2 

Sound Books 7 – 12


Tricky and Helpful Words


Level 3

Sound Books 13 – 18


Tricky and Helpful Words


Level 4

Sound Books 19 – 24


Tricky and Helpful Words


Level 5

Sound Books 25 – 36

Tricky and Helpful Words