Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes

Tune in: Phoneme-Grapheme correspondences

10 minutes

Find out: Blending

5 minutes

Take action: Word chains

5 minutes

Take action: Decoding

// identifies phoneme (sound) and <> identifies grapheme (written)

Tune in: Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences

Step 1

One at a time, display each of the letters and ask students to say the sound they represent (if the student says the name of the letter, tell them, “Yes, that is the name of the letter, but what sound does it make?

Step 2

Provide students with Worksheet Task 1. Say a sound from the task (/s/ /a/ /t/ /p/ /i/ /n/ - no specific order). Have your students repeat the sound and then locate it on their worksheet. Once you have worked your way through all of the sounds, have your students cut out the cards in preparation for the next task.

Find out: Blending - CVC Words

Step 1

Provide your students with a whiteboard, marker, eraser and the letter tiles they just cut out. Set up the teacher whiteboard as per illustration, with the sticky notes for each letter at the top of the board and 3 lines, one for each letter in the word, below.

Tell your students, “Today we are going to practise making words with the following sounds. I am going to point to a letter, as I do tell me what sound the letter makes.” Point to each letter and have students say the sound. If students say the letter name, remind them that is the name, but we want to use the sound to make the words today.

Step 2

Tell students, “We are going to make the word sat”, and repeat slowly, elongating the sounds “sssaaattt”.

Step 3

Point to each placeholder line in turn. Slide your finger along the lines and repeat “sssaaattt”, “sat”. Point to the first line and ask your students, “What sound do you hear?”

When you identify /s/, bring the letter <s> above the corresponding line, if students incorrectly identify the sound, repeat the process. Repeat for the final two letters, asking students what sound they hear, which letter it corresponds to, and then moving it down to its place in the word.

Step 4

Point to each letter and have students say each phoneme one by one. Slide your finger along the bottom of the letters and have students read the word. Initially, they may need to say this with teacher support.

Step 5

Now we have discovered ‘sat’, let’s look at some more words. Repeat the process on the main board as a group with the words ‘sit’ and ‘sap’.

Step 6

Now that we’re getting the hang of it, students can complete the task on their boards in conjunction with the main board for pin, pan, nap.

Take action: Word Chains - CVC Words

Step 1

“Great! Now we are going to practise making new words. Find the letter tiles <p> <a> <t> and make the word pat.” Have students point to each letter and say each sound and then the whole word. Have students point to each letter and say each sound, then the whole word. At this stage, it is important that students point to each phoneme as they say it and to then slide their finger along as they say the word.

Tell your students, “We are going to change the word pat to the word sat. paaatt to sssaaatt, which sound do we need to change?”

Students identify /p/ “Yes, we need to change /p/. What sound do we need to change it to, paatt to ssssaat? Yes, we need a /s/. Move /p/ and bring /s/ to replace it.

“Now point to each letter and say their sound, and then say the word” Model this with students, /s/ /a/ /t/, sat.

Step 2

“We changed pat into sat, well done. Now we are going to change sssaaattt (point to sounds as you say them) into the word sssiiitt. Which sound do we need to replace? Medial sounds can be harder to distinguish, you may need to elongate the /i/ as you run your finger under the word.

Repeat the process as you did for pat to sit: Say the new word, identify which sound is changing, identify which letter represents the new sound, and substitute it.

Repeat the process to make more new words.

pat → sat → sit → it → pit → pin → pan → tan → tap → tip

Take action: Decoding - CVC Words

Step 1

Ask your students to look at Task 2 of the Student Worksheet and to read the words out loud.

You will need to tell students the word the at this stage. It is an irregular spelling pattern, and so is a heart (or sight) word.

Step 2

Ask your students to read the sentence on Task 3 of the Student Worksheet.

Learning Support: If students are not up to reading the whole sentence, you can instead do single-word dictations (where students read one word) or model the whole sentence and then chunk the sentences into individual words.

Learning Extension: Students can cut the individual words out and paste them in order to form the decodable sentence; you can have them copy the sentence or extend further by completing the task as a dictation.

These concepts should be revisited throughout the week before diving into lesson 2.

Reflection

Provide each student with a ‘word poster’. Ask them to use their letter cards to make words and glue them on their posters. Each week they will get new letter cards, so you can choose to add to the poster at the end of each lesson or wait until you have worked through the phonics lessons and use all the cards they still have (we know they will lose some!).

Systematic Synthetic Phonics Instruction: Lesson 1

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Summary

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