Literacy News
I am often asked how reading is taught in infants at St Paul’s. Research has shown that explicit, systematic teaching of phonics is a more effective way of teaching reading than Whole Language. Whole-language is based on the belief that reading is a natural process whereby, if students are exposed to good literature and develop a love of reading, they will learn to read. This belief has been disproven by reading research and by the number of students across our country who are not strong readers, both of which tell us that exposure and the desire to read is not enough. Reading researchers estimate that just 5% of students learn to read relatively effortlessly. I always like to use this analogy. You don’t learn to play the guitar by listening to guitar music. You need many explicit lessons on how to play combined with a lot of practise in order for you to eventually play beautiful music. Reading is no different.
The systematic teaching phonics is only one of the small areas of teaching and learning that occurs during the English block, it is not the entire English block. Phonics is taught daily for 30 minutes at the beginning of the English block in Kindergarten to Year 3. It is taught systematically incorporating a multi sensory approach whereby the students will engage in learning using whiteboards, hoops, word cards, body actions, songs and peer interactions to support phonics learning. This 30 minute session then leads into the remainder of the English block where students engage in shared reading, comprehension, guided group work, handwriting and writing teaching and learning opportunities, all aligned to the English curriculum.
Sheereen Brunetta
Assistant Principal
A Parents’ Guide to Phonics
A guide to how phonics will help your child to read and spell.
What is synthetic phonics?
There are 6 components in reading:
- Oral Language
- Phonemic Awareness
- Phonics
- Fluency
- Vocabulary
- Comprehension
Phonics is a means to an end. Research and evidence based systematic, high quality phonics teaching is essential, but more is needed to achieve the goal of reading such as fluency, vocabulary, phonological awareness, oral language and finally comprehension.The synthetic part refers to synthesizing or blending sounds to make a word.
Phonics is the method of teaching children how spoken words are composed of sounds, called phonemes and how the letters in words, called graphemes correspond to those phonemes.
One of the processes of reading involves decoding or ‘breaking’ the word into separate phonemes, so that meaning can be gained. English is essentially a code that can be encoded (written) and decoded (read).
Children are taught that we can make a word from the sounds and then break it apart again when we want to spell it.
Spelling and reading are taught together but children may be better at reading before spelling or vice versa.
Written English is recognised as being a complex language. We have 26 letters but approximately 44 phonemes (sounds) in the spoken language
Letters and Sounds Synthetics Phonics program
‘Letters and Sounds’ is a research and evidence based synthetic phonics teaching program produced by the UK and used in many schools worldwide. It employs an explicit, systematic and cumulative approach to teaching phonics.
There are six phases in which the children are introduced to all 44 phonemes and corresponding graphemes, starting with the most familiar grapheme for each phoneme first. E.G. s,a,t,p,I,n
Synthetic phonics starts with ‘phonemic awareness’, which is hearing the different sounds in a word and the matching of these phonemes to single letters (graphemes). At the same time it shows how these phonemes (sounds) can be ‘blended’ to produce words and the words can be ‘segmented’ to write.
Children will learn simple letter to sound correspondence. This is when a phoneme is represented by a single grapheme as in the word c / a / t. When that is mastered, children will progress to learning that sometimes one phoneme is represented by two letters in a grapheme, as in the word ch / o / p; where ch / is only one phoneme (sound).
Then after that, children will progress and learn that sometimes a single phoneme can be represented many different ways. Like the sound / ay / in play. Children will eventually learn that this phoneme can be written;
/ ay / as in play
/ a-e / as in spade
/ ea / as in break
/ ey / as in hey
/ eigh / as in eight
/ ei / as in vein
Finally children will learn that sometimes a single (or more) letter may represent more than one phoneme; for example, the ‘o’ in / most / and the ‘o’ in / hot / or the ‘ow’ in / wow/ and the ‘ow’ in / tow /.
There are a huge number of letter combinations (graphemes) needed to make these 44 phonemes.
What happens in K - 3 at St Paul’s?
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Kindergarten: |
Phase One - Phonemic Awareness Phase Two- s,a,t,p,l,n,m,d,g,o,c,k,ck,e,u,r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss Phase Three-j,v,w,x,y,z,zz,qu, ch,sh,th,ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er |
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Year One: |
Phase Four – Revision, consolidation and mastery of Phase Two and Phase Three. Phase Five - ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw ure (/zh/ as in treasure), wh, ph, ew, oe, au, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e |
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Year Two: |
Phase Six – Tense, prefixes, suffixes: s, es, ed, ing, ful, er, est, ly, ment, ness, y, spelling strategies such as base words, analogy, mnemonics, syllables. |
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Year Three |
Continual revision of Phase Two – Six Morphology (root/base words, compound words, suffixes, prefixes) Etymology (word derivations/ origins) |
Not all children progress at the same rate, some children may need to revisit some aspects, therefore each lesson is taught using the process of:
Glossary of Terms:
Phonics: Knowledge and skills of segmenting and blending, knowledge of the alphabetic code and an understanding of the principles underpinning the way the code is used in reading and spelling.
Phonemes: A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word that can change its meaning (e.g. in /bed/ and led/ the difference between the phonemes /b/ and /i/ signals the difference in meaning between the words bed, led).
Graphemes: A grapheme is a symbol of a phoneme, that is, a letter or group of letters representing sound. There is always the same number of graphemes in a word as phonemes.
Grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and phoneme–grapheme correspondences: We convert graphemes to phonemes when we are reading aloud (decoding written words). We convert phonemes to graphemes when we are spelling (encoding word for writing). To do this, children need to learn which graphemes correspond to which phonemes and vice versa. In order to read an unfamiliar word, a child must recognise (‘sound out’) each grapheme, not each letter (e.g. sounding out ship as /sh/-/i/-/p/ not /s/- /h/ - /i/ - /p/), and then merge (blend) the phonemes together to make a word.
Syllable: A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word.
Closed syllable: ends in a consonant. The vowel has a short vowel sound, as in the word bat.
Open syllable: ends in a vowel. The vowel has a long vowel sound, as in the first syllable of apron.
Silent e syllable: is typically found at the end of a word. The final e is silent and makes the next vowel before it long, as in the word name.
Vowel team syllable: has two vowels next to each other that together say a new sound, as in the word south.
Consonant+l-e: syllable is found in words like handle, puzzle, and middle.
R-controlled syllable: contains a vowel followed by the letter r. The r controls the vowel and changes the way it is pronounced, as in the word car.
Diphthong syllable: contains two vowels in which a new vowel sound is formed by the combination of both vowel sounds.
