Phonics and the Phonics Screening Test
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds
At Oldfield Primary School, synthetic phonics is taught as the main approach to early reading. Daily phonics sessoins are taught from Reception throught to Year 1 using the "Little Wandle" programme.
Little Wandle is divided into six phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. There are no big leaps in learning. Children have the time to practise and rapidly expand their abiity to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell 'tricky words'. These are words taught at each phase which cannot be phonetically sounded out, and are taught through sight recognition for example, "said, the, was".
The emphasis in year 1 is on children's active participation and the children focus on the phase that is suited to their individual needs. They are encouraged and taught how to use their phonic knowledge for reading and writing activities and in their independent play.
Phonics Vocabulary
Phoneme - The smallest unit of sound. There are approximately 44 phonemes in English (it depends on different accents). Phonemes can be put together to make words.
Grapheme - A way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. igh or 4 letters e.g ough.
GPC - This is short for Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondence.
When children know a Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondence they are able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa.
Digraph - A grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).
Trigraph - A grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).
Blending- This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then blending these phonemes together to make a word.
Segmenting - This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes (sound talk/sounding out) that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order.
For more information and ways to help your child, please visit the parent section of their website:
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Phonics Screening Check
The phonics screening check is taken individually by all children in Year 1. It is a nationally required assessment which takes place in June.
It is designed to give teachers and parents information on how your child is progressing in phonics. It will help to identify whether your child needs additional support at this stage so that they do not fall behind in this vital early reading skill.
The check is a list of 40 words which children will read one-to-one with a familiar teacher. It will assess phonics skills and knowledge learned through Reception and Year 1.
It will check that your child can:
- Sound out and blend graphemes in order to read simple words e.g. n-igh-t
- ·Read phonically decodable one-syllable and two-syllable words, e.g. cat, sand, windmill.
- ·Read a selection of nonsense words which are referred to as ‘pseudo or alien words’.
Here is a useful guide for Parents:
Little Wandle
Past Papers
We recommend that parents2015 Phonics Screening Check practise the Phonics Screening check with your child at home with these past papers: