The Power of Phonics: A Structured Six-Phase Learning Approach for Children

Phonics enables children to experience regular, planned opportunities to listen and talk about what they hear, see and do. Phonics is a six phase learning programme that is incorporated within nurseries and primary schools. It enables children to blend phonemes for reading and segmenting for spellings. Phase one is aimed at the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) as it falls within the communication, language and literacy section. This phase recognises the importance of developing speaking and listening skills. This enables children to start a systematic programme then they are more likely to succeed.

Within nurseries and primary school they carry out jolly phonics. Jolly phonics enables the children to learn the sounds of letters, this can be incorporated within a song to represent each letter of the alphabet for example for a you say; A A A Ants up my arm, you would say this doing a pinching movement up one of your arms. Within jolly phonics there are five skills that are taught, these include; learning the letter sounds this is when children are taught the 42 main letter sounds.

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This includes alphabet sounds as well as digraphs such as sh, th, ai and ue.

Learning letter formation this is when children are able to use different multi-sensory methods, they learn how to form and write the letters. Blending is when children are taught how to blend the sounds together to read and write new words. Identifying the sounds in words (Segmenting) is when the children are able to listen for the sounds in words gives children the best start for improving spelling.

And then there is tricky words, Tricky words have irregular spellings and children learn these separately away from the other words.

Jolly phonics helps to support children by learning within a fun environment. http://jollylearning. co. uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/ Phase 2 is the beginning of the systematic programme. These phonics are best being taught in short, discrete daily sessions. Stage 2 starts with an approach to start learning some letter formations e. g. ‘S’ ‘A’ ‘T’ ‘P’ ‘I’ ‘N’. Within settings this could be incorporated by burring letters in sand of bubbles for the children to find and tell you what sound that letter makes and then put it back in for other children to find. The systematic programs are not designed to control the teachers but to control the presentation of information in order to help children manage and master the complexities of our language. The purpose of a systematic program is to help the child learn. ’ http://www. righttrackreading. com/dsphonics. html Phase three completes the teaching of the alphabet and helps children to move on to sounds that consist of more than one letter e. g. ‘he’ ‘the’. Phase four enables children to learn to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants, e. . ‘the’ ‘black’ within the word black, ‘bl’ are adjacent consonants because they are two different consonants containing different sounds whereas ‘ck’ at the end of the word black aren’t adjacent consonants because both letters contain the same sound. Some children may pick up phonics really well and may need this stage earlier than other, in which case they should not be held back. Phase five extends graphemes and phonemes. Graphemes are the names of all the individual letters in the alphabet, phonemes are the sounds the letters make.

It shows children that words may sound the same but are spelt differently with different meaning e. g. meet and meat. Phase six should enable children to read automatically usually spellings lag behind reading, so children may still find it difficult to read. Spelling needs children to recall the word from memory and recompose it without being able to see it. Children who are in secondary school aged between 11-16 carry out spelling activities. During nursery and primary school they learnt the basic phonics to help them read, write and spell.

Spelling help to further develop each child and young person’s skills. For example within my setting I was working with the nurture group and they received ten spellings every week. Most of the children within the nurture group had SLCN. The children with SLCN always struggled with their spellings, so therefore I provided my support to whoever wanted it. All the spellings they received every week had the same sound in common, e. g. heat, meat, cheat, great. All of these words have ‘eat’ in common.

Within my support I explain to the children that the words may sound differently but the spellings they always received had sounds in common so therefore pointing this out they was able to think of the starting of the word and knew each work has the same sound in and was then able to achieve more marks out of ten on their spellings. This helped to boost their confidence and self-esteem because they knew they could do it. Young people that attend college and university aged between 16-25 may carry out key skills/functional skills.

Once you leave school and set out to go to college, there are some skills that young people are going to be better knowing and understanding than not having those skills. Once young people have learnt them, then their day-to-day life will be a lot easier. Whatever children and young people do their going to have to know how to communicate and work with numbers, because literacy and numeracy are a very important when wanting a job as they are a must. Children and young people are going to need to know the basics when it comes to ICT. When young people are ready to apply for jobs or college courses, they can’t just state what they are good and aren’t good at, they will need to prove it. They can do this by completing a set of courses that assess how well they do at the skills they need to get their dream job. These set of course are called Key Skills. These courses include; communication, application of number, information and communication technology (ICT), problem solving, improving own learning and performance, and working with others.

These skills will help children and young people to further develop their skills. If young people have SLCN then they may receive support to complete these skills to enable them to go on to college or to get a job. | Adults can help to extend the speech, language and communication development by simply involving them in conversations using a child language instead of an adult language. This enables the children to understand you more when you ask them questions. For example if you asked ‘How are you feeling today? they may not fully understand as it is a complex question whereas if you asked ‘Are you okay? ’ this is a simpler question and will be easier for them to understand. If you interact children with SLCN they are more likely to improve their vocabulary and social communication because they are involved within an activity and may start to communicate with other children without really noticing. Adults could also work with parents/carers by communicating with them and possibly sending SLCN activities home with the child or young person to complete at home with their parent/carer.

This enables the parent/carer to see where their child is at within their development and also enables them to help their child further develop their skills. Phonics, spellings and key skills all have positive effects on a child and young person’s life. Phonics enables children to understand the names and sounds of letters and help them learn to read, write and spell. Learning phonics enables them to progress through primary school to secondary school. Being able to read and write enables the children and young people to complete their work and their SAT’s.

Completing spellings enables children and young people to develop their writing skills and their vocabulary as they may know how to spell a word without maybe knowing that it is a word. Key skills effects young people’s lives because it teaches them six different skills to help them apply for college courses and gain a further education to get a job that they want. Doing all of these things is improving their speech, language and communication needs and also their vocabulary. 3. 3 – Apply research evidence to planning an environment that supports speech, language and communication

Within my work setting I worked closely with children with additional needs. Within my work setting we always got told that if a child I was there to support was getting too frustrated within lessons to remove them from that lesson and take them to a calmer and quieter environment and work 1:1 with that child. For example child T has SLCN and he doesn’t like noise and gets frustrated and distracted very easily so my setting enables him to receive brain breaks which enables him to leave the classroom with his TA and have a little walk and a drink to calm him down until he feels ready to return to the classroom.

If he feels he can’t go back to the classroom because of the atmosphere then it is down to the TA to return to the classroom and collect the work he needs to complete and liaise with the class teacher to inform them how child T is feeling and wanting to complete his work in a quieter environment as he feels he will work better and will be able to complete his work to a better standard. When a child is removed to a quieter environment the work is broken down into small steps for them to complete one after another.

This enables the child or young person to understand the work and remain on task as they won’t get frustrated because they don’t understand it. Providing these sessions with child T enables him to enjoy coming to school as he knows if he starts to struggle then staff can make it easier for him. This also enables him to achieve his set targets within his lessons as we are providing support for him to complete his work.