Help with Phonics

What the words mean

Adjacent consonants Two (or three) letters making two (or three) sounds. E.g. the first three letters of strap are adjacent consonants. Previously known as a consonant cluster.
Blending The process of using phonics for reading. Children identify and synthesise/blend the phonemes in order to make a word. E.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap.
Consonant digraph Two consonants which make one sound. E.g. sh, ch, th, ph
CVC, CCVCC etc. The abbreviations used for consonant-vowelconsonant and consonant-consonant-vowelconsonant-consonant words, used to describe the order of sounds. E.g. cat, ship and sheep are all CVC words. Black and prize could be described as CCVC words.
Diagraph Two letters which together make one sound. There are different types of digraph – vowel, consonant and split.
Grapheme A letter or group of letters representing one sound (phoneme) E.g. ck, igh, t, sh
Phoneme The smallest unit of sound in a word.
Segmenting The process of using phonics for writing. Children listen to the whole word and break it down into the constituent phonemes, choosing an appropriate grapheme to represent each phoneme. E.g. ship can be segmented as sh-i-p.
Split Diagraph Two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word. E.g. a-e as in make or late; i-e as in size or write.
Synthesising The process of using phonics for reading. Children identify and synthesise/blend the phonemes in order to make a word. E.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap.
Trigraph Three letters which together make one sound. E.g. dge, igh
Vowel Diagraph A digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel E.g. ea, ay, ai, ar

new.phonicsplay.co.uk/

phonicsbloom.com 

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Games such as 'Buried treasure', 'Dragons den' and 'Picnic on Pluto' are great for identifying real and nonsense words. They encourage children to decode words by sounding out. There are teaching tips for parents and you can target the games to focus on sounds your child need more practice on. For example, if your child is unsure of the ‘air’ sound from phase 3, you can select to only see words in the game containing this sound.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zcqqtfr

The BBC bitesize website has a range of resources to introduce phonics sounds. The sounds are set out in the order they should be taught to children, making it easy to follow. Each sound has a short video introduction and provides examples of words containing the sound. There are follow up games to play where pupils can spot words containing the sound they have just learned.

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

The Alphablocks have resources which are colour coded to reflect different stages:

• red and orange levels introduce single letter sounds. -yellow introduces digraphs, such as ch, th, ai, ow and or.

• green level allows pupils to practice letter blends; at the beginning of words ,(clap, step, frog), the end of words, (lamp, best) and at the start and end of words, (blend, stamp, crank).