So what is all this Phonics Malarkey?
Apologies in advance this blog is me in teacher mode!
If your child attends nursery or is starting school in September chances are you have heard of phonics. I am a huge phonics convert and officially a lover of phonics. I believe it enables little minds to become independent readers and spellers from a young age. I was not taught to read and spell by using phonics. I was part of the generation that was taught to read by flashcards, which worked for me as I ultimately learnt to read and spell.
However, there were problems with this method. Firstly, a child was only able to read or spell the words that they had learnt through sight. This meant a child had no independent way of reading or spelling new words. Secondly lots of children fell through the gaps and were simply labelled ‘unable to read.’ This is simply not good enough.
All schools will follow a phonics scheme. A phonics scheme is, simply put, the way in which a teacher is encouraged to teach phonics. There are many different schemes out there so schemes will vary from school to school. but the fundamentals of each scheme are similar. “Letters and Sounds”, published in 2007, is the Government scheme of teaching phonics.
Through phonics, children will learn the sound that each individual letter (grapheme) makes. Once a child is confident with sounding out the individual graphemes, they are then taught the skill of blending the sounds back together. At this point the child is able to read words. However, English is tricky. Very tricky! There are 26 letters in the English alphabet but 44 unique sounds. And this is where it gets more complicated. For some of the phonemes (sounds) there is more than one way to make the sound. For example, the ‘k’ sound as read in these words: ‘cat,’ ‘kitten,’ ‘back’ and ‘chemist’ are all written in different ways.
In addition, there are times when a sound isn’t just made by one letter but by two (diagraph) or even three (trigraph)! An example of a digraph is ‘ch’ as in ‘church’ and an example of a trigraph is ‘igh’ as in ‘sigh.’ There are so many different rules in phonics that your little one will become familiar with. Of course, then there are those words that don’t follow “the rules” and cannot be sounded out. These words need to be memorised. For example ‘you’. The English language is not an easy language to learn to read.
So, what can you do to help your child with their phonics?
Try and find out what your little one already knows. Chances are they will surprise you! Can they identify what sound they can hear at the beginning of a word? Which sounds can they already read? Can they blend sounds back together to read words? Practice reading sounds with them. The faster they can recall sounds the easier they will find it to blend them back together to read words. The best way to practice is through games. Learning through play is often the most effective way for little ones to learn!
When should you start phonics?
In my opinion it is never too early to start. The initial stages of teaching phonics are probably things that you are already doing with your children even when they are babies. These include:
Listening to sounds in the environment
Going on a listening walk is a great way of starting your child’s phonics journey at a young age. A listening walk is simply pointing out noises in the environment to your little one. This is actually one of the first activities that a nursery / school will do when starting phonics.
Recognising what is making the sounds and direction of the sounds
Where are the sounds coming from? What is making that noise? Then imitating the sounds you hear. My youngest can’t say car, cow, cat or ambulance but can say “brumm brumm,” “moo,” “meow,” and “nee nar nee nar!”
Rhythm in Language
Rhyme is important as children are able to hear and then recognise words that have the same sound in them. There are so many great children’s books with rhyme in and your local library is a great place to start looking. Our current favourite rhyming book is ‘Little Blue Truck’ by Alice Schertle
Sounds at the beginning of words
Can your child recognise the sound at the beginning of their name? Whose name begins with F? Whose name begins with M? Is a nice and simple way to start. We have spent many car journeys playing ‘I spy’ but using the sound at the beginning of the item instead of the letter. Our Phonics Lucky Dip game is an activity which practices this skill.
Looking at the Grapheme (Letter)
Here is M saying some of those first sounds. Hopefully this will help you to work out what sounds the letters make.
Then it is time to recognise the letters that make the sounds. If your child is interested and as long as they enjoy it, then why not teach them the sounds that the letters make. There are letters all around us and often without any prompting children will take an interest in them. They will want to know what the words say and even sometimes attempt to copy what they have seen. F loves running around with a post-it note shouting “a, a, a!” Children are naturally inquisitive so be sure to feed that thirst for knowledge. I bought these sound cards to use at home which are the home version of the ones I used as a teacher at school. They are great as they come with an image on the reverse side to help your child remember the sound. They also come with advice to parents on how to teach your child the sounds and blending. The best way of course to learn is through play so try some of our phonics games, have fun and build your little one’s confidence
So which letter should you start with? In many ways it doesn’t matter. With my eldest, we started looking at the letter m, as that is the first letter in her name. We then moved on to the other sounds in her name. Or if there is a particular sound that is meaningful to your child start there. In the “Letters and Sounds” Phonics Scheme, it is suggested that children learn these letter sounds first and in this order:
s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
But different schemes, can suggest a different order. It is important to say the pure sound and not add extra sounds to the end of a letter sound. For example, most people pronounce the sound ‘t’ as ‘tuh’ and ‘m’ and ‘muh.’ Adding extra sounds to a letter will make it tricky for your little one to blend a word. If you are unsure ask your child’s teacher. When I was a teacher, I was more than happy to teach parents the pure letter sounds, as importantly this supports the child.
This is me practicing assisted blending with M. I first say the sounds and then the word. Then it’s M’s turn.
What comes next? Blending!
Once your child knows 6 sounds they can start to learn to blend. Blending is essentially putting the individual sounds back together to read a word. So c-a- t becomes cat. Simple right? Unfortunately not. This is a skill which does take a while before it clicks. But once your little one can blend, they are able to read so many words independently. To support your child, you can orally model how to say the sounds and blend them back together. This can be brought into daily life and made fun: “Daddy is a bit tired today he keeps speaking strangely. He said we should go s-i-t down. What does he mean?”
The next stage I would suggest is assisted blending. This is where you read the sounds, then you read the word for your child and then your child repeats it. Keep doing this until your child has got the hang of it. It is important to build up their confidence when reading words. We want them to feel successful and that they CAN read! M has always been so proud of being able to ‘read’ words even when we were at the assisted blending stage. She felt that she could read and this was empowering for her.
This is M doing independent blending. Reading the sounds independently and then blending back together to read the word.
Once they are ready they can then blend independently. This is where you make a word out of letters, your child then sounds it out and then reads the word. If they struggle with a word just go straight back to assisted blending for that word. It’s no big deal. And remember to celebrate and praise!
What should you expect from your child’s school?
You should expect that, at some point, your child will be assessed in order for the class teacher to know exactly what your child does and doesn’t know. Don’t panic, this isn’t a test. A teacher will assess your child without them even knowing it and it’s imperative that this happens. This way there are no gaps, nothing is missed.
Ideally phonics should be taught in small groups of children that are at a similar stage of phonics. Of course, in a small school setting this is trickier. Schools have limited resources and time available to them. So whatever you can do with your child at home will make a huge difference too. When I was a phonics manager at school we had parent workshops where we actively encouraged parents to practice what the children were learning at school at home.
Books which are appropriate to your child’s reading level should be sent home for you to practice together. These should be books that your child will enjoy reading and be able to ‘have a go’ at reading independently. The books we used at my previous school were specifically designed using only the sounds the children had learned at each stage so that they could actually read the words in them. The children felt a sense of achievement that they could read them. These are the first stage books. They are expensive but I managed to recently purchase some second hand for M.
So why not start teaching the odd sound? Make phonics fun! Play games. Reading should be fun. It should never be a chore. If your child doesn’t enjoy reading books, encourage them to read comics, magazines, signs or the back of food packaging The more confident and successful they feel about reading the more chance there is they will enjoy it and keep going. Reading is a necessary life skill. Through reading worlds are opened up, information can be gathered and stories can be discovered.
If you have any questions, queries or anything else you would like to know please just ask in the comments below. I am more than happy to help where I can. Also if there is anything you have done at home with your child that has worked again please share as we would love to hear about it.