Lesley Clarke Synthetic Phonics - Helping Your Child to Learn Letters (Graphemes) and Their Sounds in Reception: Spring Term

Helping Your Child to Learn Letters (Graphemes) and Their Sounds in Reception: Spring Term

In the Spring term, children will be revising the less common single letters eg j, v, w, x, z, zz and consonant digraphs (eg sh, ch, th, ng). They then learn some vowel digraphs - 1 for each of the sounds they haven't yet covered.

Lesley's Activities:

Letters and Sounds Phase 3 Week 4: Recognising 'ai' 'ee' 'oa'

11th January 2021

In this activity children learn a song to help them recognise 'ai', 'ee' & 'oa'.

Letters and Sounds Phase 3: Week 6: Touch The Grapheme

11th January 2021

In this activity children use different body parts to point to the grapheme which is called out.

Activities on Other Websites:

Jolly Phonics Songs

Encourage your child to join in with the singing, whilst doing the appropriate action. A good number of schools use the Jolly Phonics mnemonic actions (memory aids) to help children remember the sound each letter represents.

Play the video

Phoneme Pop

Select the set of graphemes for your child to practise by clicking the circle to the left of a set of letters. A grapheme appears in one corner of the screen. Bubbles float across the screen with graphemes attached underneath and your child has to pop the ones which match the grapheme in the corner of the screen.

Play

Foam Phonemes

Call out a sound. Get your child to select the corresponding grapheme from the left hand side of the screen - it will be fired out of the cannon. From ictgames.com

Play

Sky Writer

From ictgames.com.

Select a letter your child needs to practise. Watch a plane write it using its vapour trail, getting your child to follow the trail with his/her finger on the screen, saying the sound at the same time.

Play

Magnetic Letters

A whiteboard with letters of the alphabet along the bottom. Call out a sound and get your child to click on the corresponding letter for it to appear on the whiteboard.

Play

When Two Vowels Go Walking

Great video for teaching children that when we have a digraph containing 2 vowels, the sound they make together is often the name of the first one. This works for the digraphs 'ai', 'ee' and 'oa', that the children learn at this stage. NB: We don't generally teach 'y' as a vowel in this country, so the 'ay' image will need some explaining (or ignoring!)

Play the video

Pirates Say 'ar'

Great video for teaching children the 'ar' grapheme.

Play the video

Writing Trays

Below are links to a variety of creative trays you can make and use with your child to help him/her learn to write letters/graphemes. Select one that links to your child's interests or the current time of year, as this should motivate him/her to write. Call out a sound (phoneme) and get your child to write it in the tray.

How to make lavender and glitter salt for a writing tray