By Karen Crichton
Vocabulary – digraph (a sound made of two letters ex: ay), trigraph (a sound made of three letters ex: igh), phoneme (a sound ex: oo – that can be made in different ways), grapheme (unique letters that together make a sound ex: sh, oo, ie).
Clarification there is one phoneme ‘er’, but three graphemes that make this phoneme – er, ur, & ir.
Contact details: [email protected]Welcome back ! You are brave. 😀
I hope you found phonics 1 informative.
This blog is intended to give parents an idea of the phonics that are covered in school with children aged 5-7 years in KS1.
So, grab a coffee and let’s begin.
As you read through this blog you will be surprised to see the number of graphemes that are taught during year one. More are added to the list in year two, but year one is the focus phonics year. At the end of year one, the children will do a national phonics evaluation test. The results of which are used for national appraisal, regional and local school assessment and for individual evaluation. The results will be recorded on your child’s progress record and used by staff to plan for their ongoing learning. Understanding how to recognise and apply phonics is a key aim of the National Curriculum and is rightly taken very seriously. Schools teach phonics daily; sessions are highly organised, ensuring the essential use of detailed planning and progressive building of concepts – delivery is also monitored. Each school will follow one of the government approved schemes and ensure that staff are following the program accurately. There will be a specific way in which concepts are delivered, revised, and tested.
Being creative, following your child’s interests, and keeping phonics fun whilst seriously paying attention to detail are all essential aims when helping your child to identify the long list of graphemes that they will need to master.
Serious stuff !
So, as you read on, please appreciate the importance of learning the graphemes for a child. Afterall, it is their route into decoding unfamiliar words, for them to read, and to use when spelling words in their writing. To better appreciate how we use our knowledge of phonemes, watch this short clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh5BYDNUMDk&ab_channel=OxfordEducation
Joining year one is a little shocking for children. Following the free flow of learning through play, which is the style of both Nursery and Foundation, year one’s expectations are very different. Sitting for longer periods of time, focusing on activities that have been chosen for them, is difficult in itself. So, it is important that we grown-ups stay positive and make this transition as fun as possible. The KS1 units that you will work through with Blackhen have been carefully designed – by me 😊 – to include all of the Key Stage 1 phonemes that your child will need to know, keeping them abreast with their peers being educated in the UK. In school we have the chance to revisit and refresh learning, so keep this in mind when you do your lessons with your children. Make sure you do a little, “Oooh, what was that sound again?” once in a while. You will possibly feel that teaching your child their phonics is rather dull. Your little one may well decide to run for the garden – you will have to follow and find phonics in the flora ! Being creative, following your child’s interests, and keeping phonics fun whilst seriously paying attention to detail are all essential aims when helping your child to identify the long list of graphemes that they will need to master.
Just to remind you these targets are:
The alphabet’s lower case name sounds. The alphabet name sounds.
Using these sounds to build / decode CVC words.
Identifying the two letters-one sound group – ss, zz, ff, ll, ck Introducing CCVC / CVCC words.
- Bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl: blob, clap, flip, plug, slip
- Br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr: brag, crab, drop, frog, grip, prop, trip
- Sh, ch, st, th: shop, shin, shut, wish, posh, cash, push, chat, chin, chop, chug, stag, stop, step, stuck, stick, mist, cost, last, rust, thin, thug, then, that, moth, bath
- Nk, lk, sk, ng, mp, nd, nt, lp, lt, ft, and plural s: pink, sank, honk, milk, hulk, mask, busk, sing, rang, tong, lamp, temp, shrimp, rump, sand, bond, fund, mend, tent, hunt, ant, help, gulp, kilt, pelt, bolt, lift, soft, left, raft.
The above targets are considered as set 1.
Then, with those that are ready, the key stage one journey begins…
Each week in school we target three sounds. The graphemes targeted will vary according to the scheme used. My personal favourite is ‘Read Write Inc’, a scheme designed by Oxford Education. So, I am going to introduce the graphemes to you as I would in school.
Following the Foundation consolidation, during the autumn term, part 1, we look at set 2:
Each grapheme is presented on a colourful picture card with a rhyme to help trigger recognition.
“May I play?”
The children are then shown word cards (green words) that contain the grapheme . We read the words by breaking them down into sound syllables – showing children how we need to examine a word for any letter groupings that we can identify.
These cards are dual sided. One side shows the dots and dashes that help the children to spot the individual phonemes within the word. The reverseside shows the word without the dots and dashes, and these are used for speed reading games.
We also read books that target the grapheme and spell words that use it.
I am currently putting together a set of grapheme support cards and word flash cards that parents can use whilst working through the units. If you would like a set then please email me.
During our other lessons, if a grapheme comes up that we are currently studying, we point it out. You can do this with any books, magazines, labels, or environmental text that you share with your children, “Oh look ! There’s an ‘er’ sound in Supermarché ! ”.
After half term, we begin the study of set 3, whilst revisiting set 2 as part of the phonic introduction to the lesson. Here we present a mixed group of grapheme cards to the children. They call out the name of each card whilst looking for a specific card to appear – our focus grapheme .
We may get the children to whisper the name of the grapheme and then shout out the focus card’s sound, or we might get them to jump up when the focus card is shown, or shake their hands in the air, dance like a dervish, do a Mexican wave – you get the idea… By revising the past sounds we help to embed the learning.
Never assume that because your child has successfully identified a grapheme once they will remember it next time. Keep returning to past sounds – make an ‘or’ poster, list ‘ar’ words with the fridge magnets, do a supermarket hunt for ‘ch’ food (you know what I’m thinking – and it’s not chips !), make ‘ou’ words with play dough, get sticky going collage crazy with ‘oo’ or simply make phonic toast…
Why not?
So, here is set three.
Longer than two but essentially building the learning in the same way:
This set will probably go over into term two where we target set four. This final set is a mix of irregular sounds, spellings and the prefix and suffixes that need to be targeted in year one.
| Prefixes | un |
| Suffixes | s, es, ed, er, est, ing |
| Unusual ends | ve, y (pronounced as I and E), |
| Rare groups | oe, ue, ui, au, ph, wh, ou (youth), ea(head), ea (steak), ie (pie), ie (chief), ey, tch, air, ear (bear), ire, our (four), ore, oar. |
Hopefully, we will have finished looking at all of these graphemes by the end of term two so that we have time to revise before the phonic assessment in May.
I can almost feel the tension – how can you spend enough phonics time keeping your child up to date? Don’t worry – says she !
Remember, all of the phonemes have been included in the programme of study, so you will have the opportunity to introduce each of them to your child. There will be a targeted activity, and often a video link to watch, to help you. You will be working one-to-one, so the delivery of a quality session will be focused and engaging. I suggest that when you introduce the phonic activity, being targeted within the unit, you begin by looking at the grapheme in isolation. Identify its sound. Then try to think about words that might use that sound. You should write them down and add the dots and dashes to show the breakdown of the sound syllables. Look at words that use the target phoneme and consider other graphemes that make the same sound, example ay & ai.
In addition to the dots and dashes, we also use a bridge when looking at split digraph e. You will see this in the following video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRYiOcqyEs8&ab_channel=OxfordEducation
Being able to spot and use the graphemes, in unfamiliar words, will help your child to read more easily. More importantly it will help them when spelling=building words. Applying their knowledge when writing is the principal aim. When thinking about how to spell a word, we encourage children to count the sounds they can hear. We touched on this in the Phonics 1 blog:
This readies them for KS1 where the children are encouraged to count the phonemes, for example tree has 3 phonemes – t/r/ee – as does sharp – sh/ar/p. Counting the phonemes, whilst looking at flash cards, helps build the child’s understanding that individual sounds can be made by more than one letter. Following the count, the children know how many phonemes they need to record. This helps them to focus and build a word to match the count, reducing the possibility of missing letter sounds.
In addition to considering the number of phonemes the child needs to record, we also encourage them to consider which of the graphemes they will need to use from the choice of those that make the same sound, for example ‘A’:
| a baby | ay ray | ai rain | a-e cake |
| A lady | day play say way stay | wait train paid afraid | made came same take safe |
As you go through the phonic activities with the children, in their Blackhen units, you will see the tips and rules that are shared in order for the child to make an educated guess at which grapheme to apply. However, this often comes down to a memory game – remembering the shape of the word. I am sure that you have experienced writing a word then saying to yourself, “That doesn’t look right.” The brain remembers word shapes helping us to recognise when we have made an error. I encourage my children to make a list of words in a spelling diary; each page of the diary is linked to a specific phoneme. I have an online version of this, so let me know if you would like a copy.
In year two, we revisit all of the graphemes previously covered – giving the children more opportunity to embed the learning. We also introduce a few more graphemes – just for fun 😜 – cover more suffixes and deal with some peculiar spellings:
| suffixes | ful, less, ment, ly, ness |
| Bizarre beginnings | Wr, kn, gn |
| G before i or e, dge, ge | badge, edge, bridge, fudge age, huge, change, charge gem, giant, magic, giraffe |
| S spelt c | race, ice, cell, city, fancy |
| O spelt u | other, mother, brother, nothing, Monday |
| O spelt a after w or qu | want, watch, wander, squash |
| Or spelt ar after w | war, warm, towards |
| Er spelt or after w | word, work, worm, world, worth |
| Le, il, al, el | table, apple, bottle, middle pencil, fossil, nostril metal, pedal, hospital, animal |
| camel, tunnel, travel, towel | |
| Plurals where y does not change | keys, donkeys, monkeys, chimneys, valleys |
Knowing the graphemes that make the phonetic sounds will help your child to be able to read and write more quickly as they head into Key Stage 2. There is of course more to come in KS2, but in comparison to KS1 the list is small. The expectation of KS2 is to apply knowledge, develop depth and to expand use of the skills introduced to the young, KS1, spongy minds that avidly soak up information presented to them – readying them to excel.
I have gone on long enough. You need another coffee – maybe even a biscuit. Enjoy !
Karen Crichton