Phonics at Brownsover Community School

What Is Synthetic Phonics?

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing in which words are broken up into their smallest units of sound or ‘phonemes’. Children learn to associate a written letter or group of letters, known as ‘graphemes’, with each phoneme. Sounds are then built up or ‘blended’ together into words for reading or, conversely, whole words are broken down or ‘segmented’ into their constituent sounds for writing.

The benefits of this approach are:

• children learn in an order which is well thought-out and allows them to progress through stages as they are ready;

• teachers have a structure for planning and clear stages for assessing children, in order to ensure progression and coverage;

• children can attempt new words working from sound alone;

• reading and writing become practices that are developed hand-in-hand.

Synthetic phonics has been the required method of teaching early reading and writing skills since the 2006 Rose Report, which examined the advantages of phonics through long-term data. The benefits of a phonetic approach has been well evidenced and, as a result, the UK government produced its own non-statutory synthetic phonics guidance document, Letters and Sounds. In March 2021, the DfE decided it should not continue with its involvement in this work. While many practitioners are moving away from using this document to directly inform their teaching, it still has had a huge impact on how we teach phonics today

How Are Letters and Sounds (GPCs) Taught?

In phonics, children are introduced to letters and the corresponding sounds they make. Children learn to link a grapheme to a phoneme and this link is referred to as a grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC). There are 44 phonemes in the English language. These include the 26 letters of the alphabet plus consonant sounds such as /sh/ and /ng/ and long vowel sounds such as /ee/ and /igh/.

Each phoneme is introduced systematically and at a fast pace. When learning the first 44 phonemes, children are introduced to around four new sounds per week, revisiting and practising taught phonemes daily to ensure secure understanding and rapid recall.

At Brownsover we follow the The Twinkl Phonics scheme which provides a variety of support scaffolds to aid children’s learning of the first 44 GPCs, including stories, mnemonics (pictures that create a visual link to the GPC), actions, letter formation rhymes and songs. Making many links through visual, auditory and kinaesthetic stimuli helps children to access and secure this learning.

Using Pure Sounds

When introducing children to the first 44 GPCs, it is important to use ‘pure sounds’. ‘Pure sounds’ refers to the way of sounding phonemes without adding an extra ‘uh’, known as a schwa, at the end of each letter. Using pure sounds helps children to blend sounds for reading and segment words for writing, as no extra sounds are accidentally inserted into words. For example:

• /s/ is pronounced as ‘sss’ instead of ‘suh’.

• /t/ is pronounced as a very short bouncy sound instead of ‘tuh’.

What Is Blending?

Blending is the key skill in the development of word reading

Blending is the process of saying each individual phoneme that appears in a written word and then running the phonemes together to hear and say the word. For the process of blending to be as smooth and effective as possible, pure sounds must be used. Secure, rapid recall of individual letter sounds, digraphs and trigraphs is crucial to enable children to blend words effectively.

What Is Segmenting?

Segmenting is the key skill in the development of word writing.

Segmenting is the process of breaking down a word into the individual phonemes in order to correctly spell the word. Children listen to, and identify, the phonemes in a word and then choose the correct grapheme or graphemes to represent them. Encourage children to hold up their fingers as they hear each phoneme and to take particular care when choosing the GPCs to represent long vowel digraphs and trigraphs or adjacent consonants. Adjacent consonants, such as ‘br’, ‘st’ or ‘cl’, can be segmented into their separate letter sounds as both sounds can be heard individually.

Children will choose graphemes from the phonetic level at which they are working when segmenting words for spelling. Especially in the early stages of learning, this will sometimes lead to ‘phonetically plausible’ attempts at spelling words. These independent attempts, while technically incorrect, should be encouraged and celebrated as spelling accuracy will improve and refine as further GPCs are learnt.

Tricky (Common Exception) Words

There are parts of some very common words in the English language that are not phonetically decodable. Some examples of these are ‘to’, ‘the’ and ‘said’. Due to the frequency and usefulness of these common words, it is necessary to introduce them as ‘tricky’ or ‘common exception’ words at the earliest stages. By introducing these words as a unique group that do not follow the usual phonics rules, it allows children to access a greater range of sentences for both reading and writing and to begin to build a bank of sight vocabulary. Common exception words are introduced first as reading sight vocabulary and then are reintroduced later as spelling words.

Children need to recognise these common exception words as sight vocabulary. It is, therefore, important to make sure all children practise them daily in order to learn them by sight and attain rapid recall.

Structure of a Phonics Lesson

Younger children enjoy consistency of approach in their phonics lessons and to know what is coming next. Therefore, similar activities should be used. This helps to build their confidence with phonics learning. Older children may enjoy more variety in approach and a wider range of activities. This helps them to see phonics as part of the wider curriculum and understand that the skills taught in phonics lessons can be applied in all aspects of learning. However, for all children, it is important that the structure and routine of your phonics lessons covers the four cornerstones of phonics every day.

The structure of every phonics lesson follows this five-part pattern to ensure that the four cornerstones of phonics are covered:

Level 2 and 3 mnemonics

The levels

The Twinkl Phonics programme contains six levels of phonic learning for children from nursery to year 2.

Level 1

Throughout Level 1, young learners develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to use and discriminate between auditory, environmental and instrumental sounds through 7 Aspects. Level 1 is taught in EYFS and underpins learning throughout the teaching of Phonics Levels 2-6.

By the end of Level 1, children will have had opportunities to:

• listen attentively;

• enlarge their vocabulary;

• speak confidently to adults and other children;

• discriminate between different sounds including phonemes;

• reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear in words;

• orally segment words into phonemes.

What Will Children Learn in Each Aspect?

Level 2

The purpose of Level 2 is to:

• teach the first 19 most commonly-used letters and the sounds they make;
• move children on from oral blending and segmenting to blending and segmenting with letters;
• introduce some tricky words for reading.

By the end of Level 2, children will have had opportunities to:

• identify the phoneme when shown any Level 2 grapheme;

• identify any Level 2 grapheme when they hear the phoneme;

• orally blend and segment CVC words;

• blend sounds to read VC words, such as, ‘if’, ‘am’, ‘on’ and ‘up’;

• segment VC words into their sounds to spell them (using magnetic letters);

• read the tricky words: the, to, I, no, go.

Level 3

The purpose of Level 3 is to:

• introduce another 25 graphemes, including consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs and trigraphs so that children can represent 42 phonemes with a grapheme;
• continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation;
• apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions;

By the end of Level 3, children will have had opportunities to:

• say the phoneme when shown all or most Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes;

• find all or most Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes, from a display, when given the phoneme;

• blend and read CVC words (single-syllable words consisting of Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes);

• segment and make a phonetically plausible attempt at spelling CVC words (single-syllable words consisting of Level 2 and Level 3 graphemes);

• read the tricky words - he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, are & spell the tricky words - the, to, I, no, go;

• write each letter correctly when following a model.

Level 4

The purpose of Level 4 is to:

• consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words, especially digraphs and trigraphs;
• introduce words with adjacent consonants - CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC, CCCVC, CVCCC, CCCVCC, CCVCCC;
• learn polysyllabic words and learn to read and spell some more tricky words. 

By the end of Level 4, children will have had opportunities to:

• give the phoneme when shown any Level 2 or Level 3 grapheme;

• find any Level 2 or Level 3 grapheme when given the phoneme;

• blend and read words containing adjacent consonants as well as segment and spell words containing adjacent consonants;

• read the tricky words - some, one, said, come, do, so, were, when, have, there, out, like, little, what & spell the tricky words - he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, here, they, all, are;

• write each letter, usually using the correct formation. • orally segment words into phonemes.

Level 5

The purpose of Level 5 is to:

• learn alternative graphemes for known phonemes;
• learn alternative pronunciations of known graphemes; introduce split digraphs;
• introduce suffixes and prefixes;
• learn to read and spell more common exception words.

By the end of Level 5, children will have had opportunities to:

• give the phoneme, when shown any grapheme that has been taught;

• for any given phoneme, write the common graphemes;

• apply phonics knowledge and skills as the primary approach to reading and spelling unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable;

• read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and threesyllable words;

• read automatically all taught tricky and common exception words;

• accurately spell all the Level 2, 3 and 4 tricky words and most of the common exception words for reading;

• form each letter correctly;

• use alternative ways of pronouncing and representing the long vowel phonemes.

Level 6

The purpose of Level 6 is to:

• develop children’s knowledge of spelling patterns and best-guess grapheme selection;
• learn more alternative graphemes for known phonemes; learn more alternative pronunciations for known graphemes;
• introduce the /zh/ phoneme; develop an understanding of the spelling rules for adding suffixes and prefixes;
• introduce homophones/near homophones and contractions;
• learn to spell more common exception words; develop their understanding of grammar rules;
• learn effective writing techniques including editing and proofreading and learn more strategies to read and write independently.

By the end of Level 6, children will have had opportunities to:

• read accurately most words of two or more syllables;

• read most words containing common suffixes;

• read most common exception words;

• read most words accurately, in age appropriate books, without overt sounding and blending, and sufficiently fluently to allow them to focus on their understanding rather than on decoding individual words;

• sound out most unfamiliar words accurately, without undue hesitation;

• segment spoken words into phonemes and represent these by graphemes, spelling many of these words correctly and making phonetically plausible attempts at others;

• spell most common exception words correctly.