As we begin to teach the children the skills that they will need in order to be successful readers and writers, we focus on speaking and listening activities.
We explore body sounds, sounds in the environment, the difference in the sounds of percussion instruments, rhythm and rhyme, voice sounds and alliteration (words that all begin with the same initial sound, for example ‘sad Sammy snake’, big bad bug).
All the way through we also teach the skills of ‘blending’ and ‘segmenting’.
Blending
We teach the children how to blend or merge sounds together to read each word, in the right order, to read a word, for example
c-a-t = cat
Segmenting
We teach the children how to segment each word to spell, for example:
- cat = c-a-t
The aim is for the child to read the whole word automatically. These activities are all done orally. The emphasis is on helping chldren to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds.
We teach the children the smallest unit of sound – called a ‘phoneme’.
This is the order in which the ‘phonemes’ are taught and practised. Correct pronunciation is vital!
- a not ay
- c not cuh or cee
- b not buh or bee
Set 1 letters: s, a, t, p
Set 2 letters: i, n, m, d
Set 3 letters: g, o, c, k
Set 4 letters: ck, e, u, r
Set 5 letters: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
Set 6 letters: j, v, w, x
Set 7 letters: y, z, zz, qu
A phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example:
- ll as in bell
- ss as in hiss
- ck as in sock
