say these sounds aloud and only then run them together quickly ( known as blending ) to say sheep .
At school , your child will be taught the different combinations of letters in a very specific order . The class teacher might tell you that they are in a particular group or Phase . This means that they know exactly how many letters and groups of letters your child knows and are teaching them to read by recognizing these in books . Your child may bring home a book which they can read almost independently using their phonics but there may be some words which they will still find difficult . This is because some of our more common words have very uncommon spellings . For example , the word ‘ said ’ has three phonemes – s , e and d . But the way the phoneme ‘ e ’ is represented is very unusual . Your child may be taught that this is a ‘ tricky ’ word because the digraph ‘ ai ’ is a very unusual way of recording the phoneme ‘ e ’.
If you want to know more about how your child is being taught to read using phonics , ask their class teacher . They will be able to tell you where your child is , what they can do independently and how you can help them practise using their phonics .
Five Ways to Help Your Child to Read Using Phonics
When you ask your child to sound out a word , first make sure that they recognize the graphemes or digraphs and know the sounds they make . Check with their teacher where your child is in their phonics .
If you child can ’ t ‘ sound it out ’ ask them which bits ( graphemes ) they know and which bits ( graphemes ) they don ’ t know . You can tell them the graphemes they don ’ t know and this will help them read the word .
If your child is struggling on a word , write it on a separate piece of paper . This helps them to concentrate on the word they are struggling with .
If your child is not sure how to blend the word using phonics , adding ‘ buttons ’ and ‘ bars ’ to the word helps . For example in the word ‘ church ’, we add a bar under each digraph … ch ur ch . In the word ‘ flight ’ we add a mixture of buttons and bars … f l igh t . The bars go under all the letters that make one sound – two , three or even four ( e . g . ough in through ). Putting the bars and buttons in helps your child to see each set of letters as one sound .
Once your child has seen a word several times in their reading , encourage them to stop ‘ sounding out ’ and to start saying the word as a whole word . Sometimes they will use sounding out as a safety net and will continue to do it long after they need to . The less they have to sound out words using phonics , the more they will read fluently and will start to understand what they have read .
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