Phonics
(Activities for Home)
Children in Foundation Stage, Year 1 and Year 2 are given regular phonics sessions as part of their learning at school. However, if you would like to do more, this part of the website will help you with some ideas.
In school, children participate in regular phonics lessons, each being approximately 25 minutes long. Phonics is a vital part of learning the basic reading skills needed in order to teach your child how to say the sounds that we use in the English language. Phonics then gives them the skills needed in order to blend these sounds together to read words and segments them to decode (put the sounds together and break them apart to read a whole word).
We would advise that you follow the ‘Speed Sound Set’ that your child is currently grouped in (either Set 1, 2 or 3 - see the link below).
The sounds are taught using the ‘pure’ sounds (without making an ‘-uh’ sound at the end). Each sound has its own mnemonic (rhyme) to help the child differentiate and remember each sound, for example, for the sound ‘ay’, they would say ‘ay – may I play?’.
Phonics resources for learning at home
5 Activity Ideas for Phonics Home Learning
1. Online Phonics Games
A selection of websites we recommend with different phonics games and activities:
PLEASE NOTE: Some website will reference to ‘phases’ of sounds. This is using a different scheme to the one we use in school. As a guide, here are the approximate Read, Write Inc equivalent groupings:
Set 1 Sounds in Read Write Inc is equivalent to Phase 1 in Letters and Sounds.
Set 2 Sounds in Read Write Inc is equivalent to Phase 2 and Phase 3 in Letters and Sounds.
Set 3 Sounds in Read Write Inc is equivalent to Phase 4, Phase 5 and Phase 6 in Letters and Sounds.
2. Practical Phonics Activities
Choose from one of these activities, or have a go at one of your own practical phonics learning ideas!
Building phonics Duplo towers (use a whiteboard pen to write directly onto the blocks or write on paper and tape sounds and words onto the blocks)
Find the missing sounds
Paint Phonics Pebbles
Matching sounds
You could use balls and an old egg box or just use the balls to word build.
Use nature to create phonics sounds or words
Phonics bingo
3. Sentence building using focused sounds for the week
Here are some examples of ways to write sentences using a focused sound:
4. Phonics Stories
Phonics stories are a great way to secure a child’s understanding of a sound and helps them to apply their knowledge of phonics into context of a story or book. There are lots of these available to read or download online or it’s a fun activity to do to write your own stories with a focused sound. Your child could find and highlight all of the key sounds by adding sound buttons and count up how many there are.
Here are a few examples of phonics stories:
Example of a story using er, ir and ur sounds
5. Parent support links for supporting Read Write Inc delivery at home
Below are linked a few further websites that may further help you with supporting your child learning phonics linked to the schemes we use at school.
Oxford Owl Parent Guide - providing resources free and paid resources to support the delivery of Read Write Inc phonics at home.
Please note - all examples of tasks / resources shown above are for illustrative educational purposes. Pictures are intended as inspiration for parents wanting further ideas for phonics activities at home and are not intended for printing.