Phase
one phonics: Fabulous phonics
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What Is Phonics?
“Teaching of sounds which correlate to written symbols”
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Phonics are the sounds which link to a written symbols. E.g. the 'sound' of 'sh' as in shut is written SH.
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Phoneme = sound.
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The way we write the phoneme is called a grapheme (I think of graphics)
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Grapheme = written phoneme.
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Why?
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We teach phonics in the UK because this is how children learn to read and write. We will shortly see the different types of phonics (thats where the debate really kicks in).
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The statutory requirement for teaching phonics in the Uk is hazy. In the Early Years the only requirement lays in the Literacy strand and the ELG on reading and writing. But no statutory guidance on HOW to teach it.
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It is included as part of the National Curriculum as 'Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription: that is, on spelling quickly and accurately through knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics).'
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In Year one there is the the phonics screening check and this checks what phonemes the child knows.
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Who?
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Who provides phonics materials for us? Well there is the DFES Letters and Sounds document which is what this training links to. There are a wealth of other materials available including the infamous Read, Write Inc programme as well as others linked to reading texts. The majority follow the same lines when it comes to the order of sounds to teach etc. It really comes down to what you can afford as a school when you're choosing programmes.
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However this training focusses on the DFES letters and sounds Phase 1 which is all about sounds around us and only lightly touches onto specific sounds which we hear in words.