Moorlands Primary

Phonics Phase 1

Phase One is the very start of being able to learn the skills in order to read and write.

It is broken into 7 aspects and is taught mainly through speaking and listening activities. Alongside this we aim to provide a rich and varied environment which supports children’s language. Oral blending and segmenting become an integral part of the later stages of Phase One. Children will develop the ability to hear sounds in words and tuning into speech sounds. Phase One teaching occurs as opportunities arise throughout the course of the day, as well as well planned adult-led activities with groups and individual children. We aim to foster a curiosity of letter shapes and words throughout Phase One to help make the transition into Phase Two smooth when grapheme-phonemes are introduced.

Interacting with children through modelling speaking and listening and talking  is critical to the success of Phase One as well as developing speaking and listening skills more widely. The best ways in which to help develop these skills are summarised as the following.

• Listen to your children without interrupting too often. This allows them to develop relevant language and will give you and insight into where their language is.
• Model good listening -Including making good eye contact, asking questions and commenting on that has been said.
• Model good speaking – This helps younger children enlarge their vocabulary as well as structure sentences, speaking confidently and clearly, sustaining dialogue

Aspect 1

General Sound Discrimination – Environmental Sounds.
The main purposes of this aspect is to.
• Develop children’s listening skills and awareness of sounds in the environment.
• Further develop vocabulary and identification and recollection of the difference between sounds

Activities to support your child:

Listening Walks
While you walk to and from school, or at the weekend while you are on a walk remind your child about good listening (e.g. keeping quiet, have ears and eyes ready). Talk about what you can hear and ask them what they can hear. Show them how to cup their ears and whether it made a difference.

Drumming
Use a wooden spoon inside or a stick outside and use it to drum on different surfaces. For example, a fence, a door, a tree. Experiment with hitting harder and softer making it louder and quieter. Talk about why the sounds are different.

Hide and Seek
Hide a teddy somewhere in the house or garden. Use a sound maker to make a louder sound when your child is getting close to the toy and a quieter noise when they are moving further away from the hiding place.

What’s in the box 
Use a box to hide a variety of objects that make a noise. For example, a set of keys, a crisp packet, a squeaky toy. Make the sound out of sight and ask your child to guess the sound

Animal noises
Describe an animal to your child without saying its name. For example, It has four legs, fur and a long tail. Ask your child to guess by making the noise of the animal they think.

Sock Shakers
Fill old socks with noisy items such as rice, pebbles, peas, marbles, shells, marbles. First of all play with the shakers and get to know the sounds. Then ask your child to find a specific shaker, can you find the shells?

Favourite Sounds
Talk about your favourite sounds, encourage your child to talk about their favourite sounds. Make a list or a poster.

Adding sounds to stories
Add sound effects to stories. For example Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, Bang, Crash

Aspect 2

General sound discrimination Instrument Sounds
The main purposes of this aspect are to
• Experience and develop awareness of sounds made with instruments and noise makers.
• Listen to and appreciate the difference between sounds made with instruments.
• Use a wide vocabulary to talk about the sounds instruments make

Activities to support your child:

Playing and listening to instruments
Listen to music and talk about the different instruments you can hear. Experiment with playing any instruments you may have in your home. Playing them loudly and quietly and talking about what they sound like.

Aspect 3

General sound discrimination – Body Percussion
The main purposes of this aspect is to
• develop awareness of sounds an rhythm
• distinguish between sounds and remember patterns of sounds
• talk about sounds we make with our bodies and what the sounds mean

Activities to support your child

Sing Songs
Singing any songs with your child is a vital part of Phase One. Add body percussion such as clapping, clicking fingers and tapping laps.

Daily Noises
Talk about sounds around the house as you notice them, coughing, yawning, munching, crunching, brushing teeth, snoring, washing, stamping.

Noisy Walks
Whilst out walking make as much sound as you can by stamping, clapping, jumping etc.

Aspect 4

Rhythm and Rhyme
Main purposes of this aspects is to
• experience and appreciate rhythm and rhyme and to develop awareness of rhythm and rhyme in speech
• increase awareness of words that rhyme and to develop knowledge about rhyme
• to talk about words that rhyme and produce rhyming words

Activities to support your child:

Reading Books
Many story books have rhyming words in them, such as The Gingerbread Man or Rumble in the Jungle. Whilst sharing a story with rhyme add plenty of intonation and expression, emphasising the rhyming words. Try leaving off the last rhyming word for your child to try and guess.

Moving Rhythmical
Whilst walking add in rhythmic movements such as skipping and marching.

Nursery Rhymes
Enjoy Nursery Rhymes together.

Rhyming words
Make up rhyming strings and give your child an option for the third word. For example dog, log and cat or frog?

Clapping Syllables
Clap the syllables of all different words.

Silly Rhymes
Make up silly rhymes using teddies names or your names. For example, Lizzy, Whizzy, Fizzy, Mizzy, Tizzy.

Aspect 5

Alliteration
The main purposes of this aspect is to.
• develop understanding of alliteration
• listen to sounds at the beginning of words and hear the differences between them

Activities to support your child:

I spy
Play I spy. Instead of using the letter name use the letter sound.

Funny Names and sentences.
Make up funny names for friends and toys or aliens. For example,  Marvellous Magical Millie. Then make up a sentence about them. For example, Terrible Ted has ten tickly toes.

It will always help a child to understand how sounds are made if they have a mirror in front of them while practising their sounds.

Aspect 6

Voice Sounds
The main purposes of this aspect is to
• distinguish between the difference in vocal sound, including oral blending and segmenting.
• explore speech sounds
• talk about the different sounds that we can make with out voices

Activities to support your child:

Voice Sounds
Show the children how they can make sounds with their voices, for example
Wheeeee when going down a slide
Boing, boing when bouncing a ball
sssssss like a snake
shhhhh being quiet
tick tock like a clock

Talk about the sounds, are they low/high, loud/quiet, long/short etc.
When reading stories try changing your voice for each character with your child. For example, growling like a bear with a gruff voice.

Aspect 7

Oral blending and segmenting.
The main purposes of this aspect is to.
• develop oral blending and segmenting of sounds in words
• listen to phonemes within words and remember them in the order in which they occur

Activities to support your child:

Oral Blending
When giving children instructions try segment words and blend them together so they are hearing the model of how to blend. For example: Can you put on your c-oa-t coat. After a while stop blending the word together encouraging your child to make the blend. For example: Touch you t-oe-s. You can also play ‘I spy’ with segmented words allowing your child to blend the sounds together. For example: I spy a t-r-ee.

Oral Segmenting
Now ask your child to take on the role in games like I spy getting them to say only the sounds in words. Add it in to everyday routines. For example, when asking your child what they would like to eat, encourage them to reply in sound talk (ch-ee-se).