We hope you found the LIVE parent sessions useful and feel more equipped to support your children at home with phonics, reading and writing. Please find below resources to further support your own knowledge. 

Please watch our phonic videos below. They will help you to support your child at home with their learning and progress. 

Mrs Harwood is our English/Phonic Lead

Children learn and recognise speech sounds (phonemes) and letter shapes (graphemes) in our daily phonics lessons. These lessons are progressive and practical, providing children with opportunities to say, hear, read, recognise and write sounds which they can then apply when reading and writing more independently. We use the well-sequenced and systematic 'Letters and Sounds Phonics Scheme' to teach daily phonics and tricky words (those words that are not decodable such as 'the' and 'me') from September in Reception. Spelling patterns and rules are also taught in line with 2014 National Curriculum Expectations for children Year 1 and Year 2.

Decoding and Word Reading 

Decoding is the skill of recognising the letters (graphemes) and knowing what sound (phoneme) they say when sounded out. To learn to read and understand the phonetic code children must learn to recognise each phoneme.

Phonemes can be made with one letter making one sound such 'b' or in b-e-d

Phonemes can be made using two letters making one sound such a 'ai' in p-ai-n or r-ai-n (these are called digraphs)

Phonemes can be made using three letters making one sound such as 'igh' in n-igh-t or h-igh (these are called trigraphs). 

As the children develop their phonic skills they will be taught alternative graphemes showing that the phoneme sound 'ee' can be spelt in many ways such as:

* Mummy (y)

* team (ea)

* scene (e-e) this is known as a split digraph as the digraph has another letter/s in between

They will also be taught about high frequency/common exception words. These are words that have tricky parts which cannot be segmented and 'sounded out' using phonic skills and have to be learned by sight. 

the, me, was, they, said

When reading and writing at home always support your child to use their taught phonic skills. Securing their understanding of the phonic code will enable them to read, write and spell with confidence and fluency. 

Phase 2, 3 and 4 are taught in Reception. Phase 4 in recapped in Autumn in Year 1 and then Phase 5 is taught. Phase 5 is recapped in Autumn in Year 2 before moving onto learning spelling patterns and rules throughout Year 2. 

Children in Year 1 complete the National Phonic Screen in June. They will be shown 40 words to read. 20 are real words and 20 are pseudo (with image of an alien so the children know they are not real words). To meet the expected standard nationally children have previously been expected to read 80%/32 of the words.

Example screening words: 

Examples of Phonics at Briar Hill Infant School

You will find many more helpful phonic videos in our 'Learning in Action' section on the Federation tab. Scroll down to the Briar Hill Home Learning sections (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) for our teacher led phonic videos.