In Reception Class we follow Letters & Sounds to teach the children phonics

There are 6 'phases' in Letters & Sounds and in Class R we learn Phases 1-4.

Below is some information to help parents in  supporting their child's learning. 

Phoneme -any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.  We say it’s a fancy word for ‘letter sound’, it is important that it is a ‘sound’ and not a letter as f is the same sound as a ph etc. Remember to use the ‘correct’ pronunciation of the sound! Keep it short!  

Letter names – this is what we will call capital letters, as they name the letters but they do not make the correct sound for reading.

Digraph -a combination of two letters representing one sound, as in ph and ey. We say 2 letters together make one sound, like in ch, sh etc

Rhyme - correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry. We say the ‘end’ sounds the same like in cat, bat, rat

Alliteration- the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. We say the first sound is the same e.g. pretty prancing penguins

Blending (for reading) - is when children ‘sound out’ the letter sounds then blend them together. For example c-a-t  cat .

Segmenting (for spelling) – is when we break the word into sounds to be able to write it down e.g. dog  d-o-g.  We call it ‘sound talk’ and we use our arms like robots, moving for each sound.

Sound buttons – these help the children to recognise each ‘sound’. We use a ‘dash’ to show that is a digraph e.g. 

b  e  d           d u ck      t r ai n

Tricky words – these are irregular (as in they don’t sound out) but high frequency words.  Children need to learn these by sight. The tricky words for Phase 2 are to, the, no, go, I.   Phase 3 they learn he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, they, her, all, are