Letters and Sounds:

1

• Letters and Sounds
• principles and practice of high-quality phonics
• Phase 1 training

2
Aims

• Clarify the content and expectations of phase 1
• Underline the importance of promoting good
  speaking and listening skills and phonological
  awareness
• Develop practitioners subject knowledge
• Introduce phase 1 Aspects and Strands as detailed
  in Letters and Sounds and consider suitable
  activities
• Identify next steps for development in settings

3
Session outline

• The Early Years Foundation Stage
  (EYFS), Communication, Language and Literacy
  Development (CLLD) and Letters and Sounds
• Phase 1 learning environment
• Encouraging good listening skills
• Planning activities
• Speech sound discrimination and oral blending and
  segmenting
• Next steps

4
EYFS, CLLD and Letters and Sounds

• The EYFS sets the standards for learning,
  development and care
• Good EYFS practice is fundamental to effective
  CLLD in the early years
• Good CLLD practice supports and enriches
  effective EYFS provision
• Letters and Sounds supports the importance of
  developing speaking and listening skills in a
  broad and rich language curriculum

5
EYFS and CLLD

• Children's learning and competence in
  communicating, speaking and listening, being read
  to and beginning to read and write must be
  supported and extended
• They must be provided with opportunity and
  encouragement to use their skills in a range of
  situations and for a range of purposes and be
  supported in developing the confidence and
  disposition to do so
• EYFS Practice Guidance page 39

6
What does CLLD mean for children?

• Building relationships, learning to interact with
  others so they become skilful, confident
  communicators
• Being able to differentiate and respond to
  different sounds and different people
• Developing their individuality learning to use
  their voice and feeling safe to express
  themselves
• Developing their language skills through a
  multi-sensory approach

7
CLLD links to the EYFS principles

• A Unique Child
• Positive Relationships
• Enabling Environments
• Learning and Development

8
The background to Letters and Sounds independent
review of the teaching of early reading

• Recommendations
• More attention needs to be given to speaking and
  listening from the outset
• High-quality, systematic phonic work should be
  taught discretely and daily and in line with the
  definition of high-quality phonic work as set out
  in the Rose report
• Phonics should be set within a broad and rich
  language curriculum that takes full account of
  developing the four interdependent strands of
  language
• For most children phonics teaching should start
  by the age of five, subject to the professional
  judgement of teachers and practitioners

9
Recommendations

• Headteachers and managers of settings should give
  phonic work appropriate priority and reflect this
  in their decision making
• Settings and schools should ensure that at least
  one member of staff is fully able to lead on
  literacy, especially phonic work
• Monitoring arrangements should assure the quality
  and consistency of early phonic work

10
The review and implications for practitioners

• Focus clearly on developing language
  comprehension through
• talking with children
• reading to children
• Focus clearly on developing sound recognition
  skills through
• tuning children into sounds
• listening and remembering sounds
• talking about sounds
• introducing oral blending and segmenting of
  sounds in words

11
Letters and Soundsthe new phonics resource

• Developed by independent experts in partnership
  with the PNS
• Meets criteria for high-quality phonic work
• Notes of Guidance
• Six-phase teaching programme
• DVD
• CLLD website

12
Phase 1

• Crucial phase in developing speaking and
  listening skills and phonological awareness
• Paves the way for a systematic phonics programme
  to begin
• Continues well beyond the introduction of phase 2
• Needs to be shared with parents and carers
• Vital for all children including those with
  special educational needs and those learning
  English as an additional language

13
CLLD, phase 1 and the communicative environment

• Discuss
• What are the important elements of an effective
  communicative environment in a setting?

14
CLLD, phase 1 and the communicative environment

• Practitioners who are knowledgeable
  about childrens communication and
  language development will provide an effective
  learning environment which includes
• authentic and meaningful language experiences
• a range of literacy tools and props/resources
• environmental print
• learning centres
• books

15
CLLD, phase 1 and the communicative environment
continued

• An effective communicative environment
• will develop
• rich and varied language experiences
• language skills outdoors and indoors
• activities that extend and support language with
  and without adults

16
Daily opportunities

• Daily planned speaking and listening activities
• Adult-led activities
• Child-initiated activities
• Exploring and applying within the learning
  environment
• Developing speaking and listening skills through
  daily routines

17
Developing an effective phase 1 communicative
environment

• Think about your current learning environment
• Look at the CLLD audit / Early CLLD audit
• Discuss with a partner

18
Effective phase 1 developing the language for
communication aspect of CLLD

• How children learn to listen and speak is
  essential to them becoming effective and skilful
  communicators
• To become skilful communicators children need to
  be provided with opportunity and encouragement to
  use their skills in a range of situations and for
  a range of purposes with people whom they know
  and trust
• Developing speaking and listening skills builds
  the foundations for literacy

19
Encouraging good listening skills

• Think about the things that annoy you when you
  are talking to somebody
• Think what happens when you are listening
  carefully to what someone else is saying

20
Phase 1 Speaking and listening Working with
children

• Model good listening skills
• Help children to tune into sounds
• Adopt listening cues
• Encourage children to listen carefully to and
  discriminate between speech sounds
• Give children time to respond
• Encourage them to make sounds themselves
• Observe their successes and difficulties look,
  listen and note
• Provide plenty of opportunities for children
  learning English to become familiar with the ways
  in which sounds are made in English

21
Planning activities

• Planned daily speaking and listening activities
• Based on childrens own abilities and interests
• Building on childrens prior experiences and
  achievements
• Activities drawn from Letters and Sounds phase 1

22
Letters and Sounds phase 1Seven aspects

• Environmental sounds
• Instrumental sounds
• Body percussion
• Rhythm and rhyme
• Alliteration
• Voice sounds
• Oral blending and segmenting

23
Letters and Sounds phase 1Three strands

• Tuning into sounds (auditory discrimination)
• Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory
  and sequencing)
• Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and
  language comprehension)

24
Planning adult-led activities

• Group task
• Choose one of these five aspects
• Environmental sounds
• Instrumental sounds
• Body percussion
• Rhythm and rhyme
• Alliteration
• Think of an adult-led activity for each strand in
  your chosen aspect

25
Planning for different aspects

• Consider the childrens phases of CLLD
  development from those in the baby room to those
  in the 3 to 4 year old room
• What would you need to think about when planning
  to cover the 7 aspects?

26
Observation and assessment

• Look, Listen and Note
• Early Years Foundation Stage

27
Letters and Sounds phase 1aspect 6 voice
sounds

• Phoneme
• Blending / Oral blending
• Segmenting
• Articulation

28
Oral blending and segmenting
Phonics concepts, knowledge and skills

• Phonics consists of four main concepts, knowledge
  of letters and the two skills of blending and
  segmentation

29
Concept 1
Sounds/phonemes are represented by
letters/graphemes English is an alphabetic
language. All the sounds (phonemes) in each word
are represented by letters (graphemes) Young
children need to know this words are not
arbitrary sets of squiggles.
30
Concept 2

• A phoneme can be represented by one
• or more letters
• t
• kn
• igh

31
Concept 3

• The same phoneme can be represented (spelt) more
  than one way

cat
kennel
choir
32
Concept 4

• The same grapheme (spelling) may represent more
  than one phoneme

mean deaf
crown flown
field tried
33
Blending

• Merging phonemes together to pronounce a word
• In order to read an unfamiliar word, a child
  must attribute a phoneme to each letter or letter
  combination in the word and then merge together
  to pronounce the word

34
and segmentation

• Hearing individual phonemes within a word, e.g.
  crash has 4 phonemes c-r-a-sh
• In order to spell, a child must segment a word
  into its component phonemes and choose a letter
  or letter combination (e.g. sh) to represent
  the phonemes

35
Knowledge of letters

• There are approximately 44 sounds/phonemes in the
  English language
• Children will learn to blend phonemes orally in
  phase1
• In phase 2 children learn to pronounce the sounds
  themselves in response to letters before blending
  them

36
Sound buttons
fin
bridge
catch
daughter
37
Letters and Sounds phase 1 aspect 7 oral
blending and segmenting

• Oral segmenting and blending
• Start with last word in sentence or phrase
• No expectation that children are introduced to
  letter/sound correspondences during phase 1
• Importance of clear enunciation
• Blending and segmenting reversible processes

38
Review of current practice

• Consider phase 1 in terms of your
• current practice and the current learning
• environment
• Are the aspects and strands covered through
  current activities?
• Are these activities systematically planned?
• Do you regularly observe and assess the children
  in these activities?
• Do you follow up these activities with
  opportunities for children to explore and apply
  their knowledge and skills in the learning
  environment?
• Do you involve parents in childrens learning?

39
Key messages for phase 1 practice

• Work with a partner
• List the most important messages from todays
  training to share with your colleagues
• Consider one aspect of your practice that you
  will change

40
Possible next steps

• Share Letters and Sounds with
• setting colleagues
• Complete the CLLD /Early CLLD audit with
  colleagues
• Discuss activities you provide at the moment and
  think how they support the seven aspects of
  learning at phase 1
• Plan how you will ensure that children have
  opportunities for both adult-directed and
  child-initiated learning
• Write an action plan for your setting identifying
  key changes to current practice

41
Further considerations

• How is CLLD viewed by the practitioners in your
  setting?
• Is there a specific policy for CLLD teaching and
  learning? What are the methods used for teaching
  CLLD?
• How well versed are the committee members or
  governors? Do you have a specific CLLD link?
• How are parents involved with your CLLD
  programme?
• How are you monitoring the impact of your
  programme?