Phonics and Early Reading
When it comes to teaching, it is important that children are supported with their learning at home, not just inside the session or classroom.
Phonics is an essential element in learning to read. To help a child to first learn to read, we can build the foundations through a love of storytelling and reading books together. Whether we cuddle up and read stories or set an example by reading books ourselves. Children are easily influenced and reinforcing positive relationships with books is a good start.
How can I help at home?
Practising the sounds
- You can help your child practise the sounds they have been learning at school. Download the charts linked above so you can see the list of sounds in the order they’ll be taught. You can show these to your child along with the picture to help them remember.
Blending
- After children learn to read some sounds separately, they can start blending them together to form simple words. Take a look at the video below for ideas on how you can practise word blending with your child.
Reading decodable books
- Your child will bring home reading books that match their current phonological awareness. You may hear these reading books called ‘decodable books’. Use the prompts inside the front and back covers to enjoy the book together and help your child practise reading.
Playing phonics games
- Play a game with your child where you take turns coming up with words that begin with the same sound. It is helpful to start with consonants. (sat, sing, silly) Spend time on each letter separately.
Flashcards
- Create flashcards with words that begin with the same sounds using the sound mats in our resources for parents/carers.
Practice nursery rhymes
- Practice nursery rhymes to develop your child’s awareness of how words can sound the same. Rhyming books are also helpful to teach and reinforce this skill. Read to your child while pointing to the rhyming words. Have your child write the rhyming words using multisensory materials.
How should the sounds be pronounced?
Children learn to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sounds they represent. Pronounce the sounds as you would say them within a word. Make sure you don’t add ‘uh’ onto the end, so for ‘m’ say ‘mm’ not ‘muh’ and for ‘l’ say ‘ull’ not ‘luh’. The below video gives you all 44 sounds in English.
How to blend sounds to read?
Once children have learnt the sounds that are made by letters and groups of letters they are then taught to blend the sounds to read words. Blending means to say the individual sounds that make up a word and put them together to hear the whole word for example s-a-t becomes ‘sat’.