Help and Useful resources

A little guide to teaching phonics...

When teaching phonics, firstly go over each sound mat. If your child is struggling on a specific sound use the picture as a prompt, for example “v, v, volcano” “oa, oa, goat”. Below are annotated sound mats if you are unsure of the the connection and videos of being saying each sound for phase 2, 3 and 4.

Once your child has recapped each sound, have a look at the phonics focus for that week. Begin by encouraging them to read and write some words including each of those sounds.

To support your child in identifying the correct sound and spelling the word correctly it may be helpful to do sound buttons. These are a dot being used to represent a single sound and a dash (underscore) being used for a diagraph/trigraph. A diagraph is 2 letters that go together to make 1 sound and a trigraph is 3 letters that go together to make 1 sound.

Once you have done some words, challenge your child by reading and writing some questions and sentences. Whilst encouraging your child to spell these words always have the sound mats out for the children to refer to, don’t be afraid to tell your child if a letter is round the wrong way or the diagraph is round the wrong way, this is all part of the learning process. Similarly, don’t be afraid to point out that they have missed a capital letter, finger space or full stop if they are writing a sentence, again this is all part of the learning process.