How to…teach segmenting

In our ‘how to…’ series we are going to delve into all things phonics instruction and give you our expert advice on developing confident readers. *** First, what is segmenting? Segmenting is the ability to separate sounds in words. The smallest sounds are called phonemes. We use segmenting when we sound out a new word, […]

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Teaching phonics in a multisensory way

Multisensory  learning is when a child uses a number of senses to experience a learning activity.  This could be seeing, hearing and touching or manipulating letters.  We experience the world with our senses and these allow  us to absorb and  learn new things.  Learning in a multisensory way helps children remember what they have learned […]

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How to write a word chain

Word chains are really important for all children learning to read, especially struggling readers. Some programmes call this activity ‘Sound swap’ (Sounds-Write) or ‘Switch it’ (Reading Simplified). Why word chains are a useful teaching tool Word chains offer children practice of the underlying skills of reading: blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation (adding, deleting and swapping […]

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What is phonemic awareness and why we should teach it

We know that phonological awareness is one of the  6 components of learning to read: phonological awareness – being able to identify sounds in words which includes, syllables, rhyme, alliteration and phonemes. phonics – to recognise letters and combination of letters that represent the 44 sounds of English fluency – ability to read with pace, […]

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The importance of skills practice when learning to read

Learning to read, initially,  has two components: 1. knowledge – learning the graphemes and the sounds they represent 2. skills – learning to blend sounds into words and segment sounds for spelling Many teachers offer lots of fun ways to learn the graphemes.  They do this in step-by-step progression starting from the simple graphemes progressing […]

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What is a phoneme?

Now that everyone is talking ‘Synthetic Phonics speak’ and it seems like Michael Gove will continue to do so – it may be a good time to clarify some of the terms  that are being used.

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