Supporting Phonics at home
In Our Lady Of Victories Infant School we greatly value the importance of good communication between home and school. We want to make sure every parent feels supported when working with their child at home. We also know that it can be difficult for most parents to practice phonics with their child because it is likely you never learnt phonics yourself or maybe english is not your first language. On this page we want to share with you how your child will develop as readers in our school and how you can support them by practicing at home. While it is vital that you practice phonics and reading at home with your child, it is equally as important that you avoid one thing: taking the joy out of reading. If your child is struggling with their phonics or reading homework please discuss this with their class teacher.
Developing Phonological Awareness
When your child arrives to school in Junior Infants in September the focus will be on developing their phonological awareness. This means being able to HEAR and manipulate the sound parts in words. It is important for children to have a good awareness of the sounds they hear in words before we attempt to link these sounds to written print (phonics). During September and October your child will be doing lots of nursery rhymes and play with sounds in words to helps them develop their awareness of sounds. At home you can help by:
- reading lots of fairy tales and stories
- playing rhyming games... I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with hook? (book)
Starting Phonics
From November-January in Junior Infants, your child will be starting to learn about the individual sounds in the english language as shown below. Again the main focus will be on developing awareness of the individual SOUNDS in the english language, while the written letter that represents these sounds will be taught once your child is confident with the sound.
Letter Sound Order
The sounds are taught in a specific order (not alphabetically). This enables children to begin blending words as early as possible. (see order chart below)
The sounds are taught in a specific order (not alphabetically). This enables children to begin blending words as early as possible. (see order chart below)
What is Jolly Phonics?
You may hear your child talk about Jolly Phonics. Jolly Phonics is just one part of our phonics teaching programme. Jolly Phonics is a fun and child centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. With actions for each of the 42 letter sounds, the multi-sensory method. The letter sounds are split into seven groups as shown above.
Saying the Sound Just Right
In the video below you can hear how the sounds should be pronounced. It is important to say the sounds as clearly as possible so that your child can move onto blending sounds together smoothly to read words.
The Jolly Phonics Lesson App can be downloaded to your phone or tablet and makes a great reference for parents when working with their child. You can find and download it from your app store on your device.
Teaching Letter Sounds Before Names
Learning to read using phonics requires children to be fluent at reading the SOUNDS in words. If a child is more fluent with saying letter names they tend to say the name of a letter when blending rather than the sound and this can cause a lot of confusion for a child. For this reason we teach the letter names after the first four sets of letter sounds have been taught. Once the children are familiar with the letter sounds they will then be taught that each letter sound also has a name. At this stage they are more able at this stage to understand the difference between the sound and name and the role each plays in learning to read.
Blending and Word Boxes
Once your child has become confident at reading letter sounds they will begin to blend sounds together to read words. We start with the most simple cvc words (vowel/consonant/vowel), such as 'cat' or 'sit'. The video below explains how sounds can be categorised into stretchy and stop sounds when blending. It also demonstrates how you can practice blending smoothly with your child.
Sight Words or Tricky Words
Another way for children to develop their reading is by learning to recognise words by sight. Learning to read words by sight helps to develope fluency when reading as your child can say the word instantly rather then sounding it out. The ability to read words by sight develops naturally as a child reads more frequently and learns to visually recognises words. But it can help to practice the words below on flash cards. While these words are called 'Tricky Words' in the Jolly Phonics program, most can actually be blended perfecty well using phonics. They are words that appear frequently in books so it will be beneficial to learn them off by sight. These words are introduced in sequence by the class teacher and will be sent home for practice once learnt in class.
Writing Letters
Your child will start learning how to write letters once they are able to recognise all their sounds. September - January in Junior infants is spent building their fine motor skills, exploring print through informal mark making and learning to draw. It is also important to develop a good pencil grip along with the hand-eye coordination and listening skills before we start teaching the complex letter formations. For this reason we would ask you not to teach your child letters until we start in school to aviid having to unteach incorrect formation. This year we are trialing pre-cursive letter formation. All letters start on the line. We teach lower case only in Junior Infants. Upper case is taught in Senior Infants.
Daily Practice of Readers
Homework Readers play another important role when learning to read by offering your child an opportunity to practice phonics and blending skills at home. It is important that your child gets one to one support from an adult outside of a busy classroom. Choose a place with as little distractions as possible to practice a few pages of a reader EACH NIGHT. It is important to read the readers a few time so the child has a chance to become familiar with reading it. The first time you read a reader it will be unfamiliar to them and this is when you will encourage the child to use their phonics skills. They can also look to the pictures to help prompt them but they should not over rely on this strategy of 'guessing'. Reading the reader a few times and it will become more familiar to them and they will develop their reading fluency. At this stage it will be beneficial to ask your child to recall some of the content of the book by asking questions starting with Who, What, Where, When and Why?
Story Time
The most important help you can give your chid to move them forward is to read read to your child as much as possible. It is proven to be the biggest influensing factor in reading development in children. Read to your child EVERY DAY, as much as possible. Visit the library and find some books that match the learning topic in school or focus 'Author of the Month'. Build their collection of books at home. Project on your child the joy of books and reading.
Further Support
Should you need any further support in supporting your child's reading at home please don't hesitate to make contact with your child's teacher. Please don't ever feel that a question might be silly or insignificant. We are more than happy to help.