Phonics

Phonics at Lozells

Phonics is proven to be the most effective method of teaching children to learn to read as it simplifies the English language down into just 44 sounds. Children therefore 'decode' words by breaking them down into its sounds rather than having to memorise 1,000's of words individually.

At Lozells, we teach our children using a rigorous synthetic phonics programme called Floppy’s Phonics. Floppy's Phonics is a beautifully crafted programme that is rigorous, easy-to-use and engages children from the outset, enabling them to learn to read quickly. This wonderful programme teaches the letter/sound correspondences of the English alphabetic code explicitly and comprehensively for reading and spelling. It includes the characters of Floppy the dog, Biff, Chip and Kipper, which engages children fully for the phonics teaching & learning, vocabulary enrichment and language comprehension.

Alongside our programme, we use high quality resources for effective and consistent phonics teaching. Our children engage in fun, multisensory phonics lessons 5 days a week, for 30mins through EYFS to KS1.

Click this link to see how we teach phonics and what we resources we use as part of our Floppy's Phonics programme.

To reinforce the phonics teaching in school, your child may bring home some books and activities to share with you. This includes:

Fully decodable phonics book linked to the sounds/phase they are learning in school.
Floppy Phonics Activity sheet
Say the sounds poster
Grapheme and picture tiles

Each week, every child will receive a Phonics decodable book linked to their phonics level. The child needs to be able to read this book independently as they will contain taught sounds and their corresponding graphemes. To help build fluency, this book needs to be read at least 3 times.

In addition to a decodable phonics books, we will also send home a reading for pleasure book to promote the love of reading. These may need to be read to the children so it is a perfect opportunity to read some great books together.

To help the children consolidate their taught GPCs, they will also receive weekly phonics homework. This part of Floppy's Phonics book bag routine as it allows repeated practice of their activity sheets, at home. This also allows you to see what sounds have been taught in school, which you can then support them with.

Your child also has access to Oxford Owl E-book library. Your child can read these E-books as well as their Phonics and reading for pleasure books. Each child has a login to access these books as well as the Floppy’s Phonics sounds books. Your teacher will tell you which Sounds book to access as it will be linked to your weekly phonics sounds.

Phonics Long Term Plan

Phonics Long Term Plan 2023-24

Phonics Medium Term Plan

Medium Term Plan

Phonics Terminology

Phoneme

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.

Feel/watch how your mouth changes when you say a word, every time your mouth moves/changes shape you are saying a new phoneme, e.g. b-r-i-ck

There are 44 phonemes in the English language

Grapheme

Graphemes represent how a phoneme is spelt. Each grapheme is a unit of sound regardless of how many letters there are.

e.g. The word b-r-igh-t is made up of 4 phonemes; the igh phoneme is represented by 3 letters but only makes one phoneme.

A grapheme can represent more than one phoneme e.g. C = cat and city

Diagraph

Two letters, which makes 1 phoneme. e.g. duck

A consonant diagraph contains 2 consonants

e.g. sh ck th ll

A vowel diagraph contains at least one vowel

e.g. ai ee ar oy

Split Diagraph

A diagraph in which the two letters are not adjacent

e.g. make - a-e is a unit of sound (diagraph)- it is being ‘split’ by the constant k.

Trigraph

Three letters, which make 1 phoneme. e.g. light

Oral blending

Hearing a series of spoken phonemes and merging them together to make a spoken word without corresponding to any graphemes

e.g. teacher says “b-u-s” children say “bus”

Blending (links to reading)

Recognising the letter sounds in a written word and merging them together in the order they are written to pronounce the word.

e.g. c-u-p = cup

Segmenting (links to writing)

Identifying the individual phonemes in a spoken word and writing them down to form a word.

Phonics Screening Check

In year 1, children will sit a national Phonics Screening where the children have to read 20 real words and 20 ‘alien’ (pseudo) words. This is conducted in a very child-friendly way by the class teachers. At every parents evening you will be informed of your child’s progress in Phonics and at the end of Year 1 the school report will inform you if they have passed or not. If your child does not pass in Year 1 they will be given additional support throughout Year 2 to enable them to pass the next year. We hold a parents workshop on the Phonics Screening check during Spring term where you will gain further information on this.

Click on links provided below to access past Phonics screening check papers.

Useful Websites and Apps

Websites

	www.phonicsplay.co.uk	A site packed with interactive phonics games and resources to help children to learn to read.
	www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/find-a-book/library-page	Oxford Owl – have over 100 free e-books for children aged 3-11 years old
	https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB5TN0ac12P97k0x0Xvn8K46bw-vTTeUD	Oxford Owl videos to help parents understand phonics and tips for reading
	https://learn.readwithphonics.com/school/phonics-games/phonics-soundwall	Useful website to help you with pronunciation of sounds used in Phonics
	https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-2	Fun games for children to play to help them with their phonics sounds