Year 1 is the year of phonics! In June, every child in Year 1 across all schools in England, will take part in the Phonics Screening Test. I have attached a link to a "Guide for Parents" that gives you an overview of what this is. It is not a pressurised test in any way, and is carried out by the class teacher, so it feels natural to the children as they will have lots of practise of sounding out and blending words throughout the year.
We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Scheme and we use this to teach Phonics and Guided Reading in Year 1, just like the children used in Reception.
In Reception, the children covered Phase 2, Phase 3 and Phase 4. To begin with in Year 1, we will revisit these phases to consolidate our learning. We will then move on to Phase 5.
What is Phase 5?
In Phase 5 children are introduced to new graphemes for reading. Some of these graphemes represent phonemes (sounds) that they have already learnt a grapheme for. For example, in Phase 3 children were taught 'ai' as the grapheme for the phoneme /a/ (as in rain). In Phase 5, children are taught that the phoneme /a/ can also be represented by the graphemes 'ay' (as in play) or 'a-e' (as in make). This variation needs to be taught as it is common in our language system.
Split digraphs are introduced in Phase 5.
What is a split digraph?
A split digraph is when one sound splits the a, e, i, o, or u and the final e. For example, stage has a split digraph but not change.
The split digraphs are a_e (cake), e_e (these), i_e (ice), o_e (rose), and u_e (flute).
I will send home videos to teach you how to support the learning of split digraphs when we reach that stage!
Every week, I will send a video on Google Classroom to support the children's phonics for the week ahead, including modelling the pronunciation of different graphemes.
I will also regularly make videos to support your understanding of Phonics.
On this page, I have attached some links to resources that you can use to support your understanding of Phonics, and on the sub-page, there is a page full of resources and links to use to support your child.
Phonics is an absolutely crucial skill for children to learn and they enjoy learning all of the new sounds! Happy learning!
Videos to Support Your Understanding:
How to teach tricky words- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTC0PbtmeUA
How to teach blending- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5YUCPyC5I
What are alien words?- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtoJZMVgy1I
Miss Broom
