Phonics is now a key part of the Foundation and Keystage 1 learning in English primary schools. Many of us parents have had the joy of practicing these sounds with our 4-7 year olds. As it is such a fundamental part of their learning the government have introduced a Year 1 Screening Check from this summer. The key points of this are to check:
- a child can give the sound when shown a grapheme
- blend sounds in order to read words
- read phonically decodable one-syllable and two-syllable words
- read a selection of nonsense words to show they are really decoding and not guessing
Oxford Reading Tree have brought out My Phonics Kit to help parents practice with their children at home. The set is based upon the popular Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy series with characters most children are familiar with from school. My son is only in Reception but we gave the kit a good try out.
The kit comes with several components:
- 3 workbooks
- reward stickers
- a sticker chart
- a CD
At the start of each book is a selection of phonic graphemes so that you can tell if your child is going to be able to complete the workbook. My son obviously didn't know them all but he was very keen on doing the books any way:
