Learning Activities

Phonics at Home

We teach independent reading through phonics first, so our younger children need lots and lots (and lots) of practice at sounding our words and sentences in order for them to become fluent decoders, so that they can then leave that all behind and focus on the understanding and enjoyment of reading. If their brains are thinking too much about sounding out and how to say the words, they will not be able to focus on the meaning behind the words and the storytelling.

Our Nursery children are taught phonics orally, and focus on various sounds and how they are made, Reception begin to learn their sounds and the various ways letters are combined to represent the 44 sounds of English, and Year 1 continue their phonics journey, and begin to learn some of the many different pronunciations of letter combinations (graphemes) and different graphemes (combinations of letters) of the sounds they have previously learnt. However, there are 117 different graphemes in English, so as you can imagine, Year 2, Year 3 and even Year 4 continue this journey – linked heavily with spelling in order to become really fluent readers. (That is where Spelling Shed comes in for regular practice of how to spell various phonemes).

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/ Lots of information, printable resources for each of the Letters and Sounds phonic phases, and also links to games aligned with each phase.

https://www.jollylearning.co.uk/jolly-phonics-e-readers-now-available/ These books are all written so that children can sound out the words using the phonemes they have learned. They are free to download until 31^st May 2021.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/learn-to-read-phonics/ information and guidance for parents/carers about learning phonics

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/resources Offers a selection of interactive games for all phonic phases. Mostly simple games. Some are free and some you need to subscribe to play.

www.ictgames.com/literacy.html Has a great selection of games that link well with games in Letters and Sounds.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z6q3p4j BBC Bitesize – Phonics resources as part of the BBC’s Learning at Home offer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zvq9bdm Games to practise Phase 3 sounds.

https://www.bigbrownbear.co.uk/letters/alt.html - Make any words with this game – a useful way to practise key words, or to sound out words for spelling.

https://phonicsinternational.com/cv-lockdown-resources/ Lots of information and resources to help you support your child with phonics, and the alphabetic code.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksblMiliA8 YouTube video guide to pronunciation of all sounds.

Useful Apps for tablets:

http://www.nessy.com/hairyletters/ Useful app with interactive activities similar to ones we use at school.

http://www.letterschool.com/ An app for practising letter formation. You can purchase the full version, or download the free version (LetterSchool Lite), which contains all the features of the full version for a subset of letters and numbers.