This document provides information about phonics instruction for Year 1 students at St. Clare College Pembroke Primary. It explains that phonics teaches reading and writing through letter-sound relationships. Letters have both names and sounds, and lessons are delivered by revising names, introducing sounds and actions, and using songs and stories. Students learn to blend sounds to read words and chop words to identify individual sounds. Games and activities are suggested to practice phonics skills at home.

1. Phonics
Year 1
St. Clare College
Pembroke Primary
2016 Pembroke Primary

2. What is Phonics?
 Phonics is a method for teaching reading
and writing the English language.
 The goal of phonics is to enable
beginning readers to decode new written
words by sounding them out.
Pembroke Primary

3. The difference
between:
-Letter names
Each letter has a name
This link will guide you with letter names:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_-lz2BI2Co
-Letter sounds
Each letter has a sound
This link will guide you with letter sounds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyKdUpJQBTYPembroke Primary

4. Learning the letter sounds – Term 2 – New
English Phonics Scheme – BIG CAT
Sounds that are going to be done in Term 2:
s, a, t, i ,p, n, c, k, ck, e, o, r, m, d, g, u, l, h, f,
b, ai , j, oa, ee
In the English alphabet there are 26 letters. From those only 7
letters have a new sound that students need to learn.
Besides these letters there are also phonemes such as ee -
sheep
Pembroke Primary

5. How lessons are delivered
- Revise letter name (songs)
- Story with picture
(We have a story for each letter)
- Introduce sound and action
- Song
(We have songs for each letter)
- Big Cat Session
Pembroke Primary

6. Example of action song
for each letter
Pembroke Primary

7. Letter formation
-Capital letters are being introduced in term
2. We call them also – The Upper Case
-When using The Lower Case, PRECURSIVE
letters are used. That is letters that have ‘exit
strokes’ (flick) to encourage cursive writing
at later stages.
-However children are also exposed to
PRINT letters especially in books.
Pembroke Primary

8. Blending
Blending means sounding out the letters
Example: s – u – n = sun
c – a – t = cat
Our green copybook (called Grammar) has
lists of words that children can:
SPELL – BLEND – READ
Pembroke Primary

9. Decoding - Chopping
Decoding works in the opposite way. When
child can blend properly, one can introduce
decoding.
Give the child a word and ask him/her to give
you the sounds in that word. Important that you
use a finger for each sound.
Example – pin (show 3 fingers) – p i n
Sessions from Big Cat Software are being done
everyday in class.
Pembroke Primary

10. Games and Activities that can
be done at home:
- I spy something beginning with ….
- Counting sounds in a word
- Rhyming words game (example: cat, rat,
mat, sat….
- Take away a sound (example: “van”
-taking away the “v” and replacing it with
“f” is fan
Pembroke Primary

11. Tricky/Fast words
In year 1 we have 60 ‘irregular keywords’ called
‘tricky words’. We cannot spell and blend tricky
words. They have to be learnt by heart.
These are words which are frequently used in
books.
A sheet with these 60 words was given to all the
children in Year 1 and we are shading with a
yellow crayon all the new words that we do
every week.
Pembroke Primary

12. 3rd
Term
During the 3rd
term the children will be doing
other 20 sounds.
z, w, oo (as in wood), oo (as in cool), ie, v, y,
ch, sh, th (as in that), th (as in thank), ng, x,
qu, ar, er, ou, oi, ue and or.
Dictations and Creative Writing will follow
during the third term.
Pembroke Primary

13. Dictation
-After the Easter holidays we will be having
Spelling games/dictations in class.
-These are done every Monday morning.
Important that parents sign on the Dictation
copybook every week and that corrections
have to be done when necessary.
-Both Maltese and English dictations will be
given and words to be studied are to be
given in a form of list to all the children
beforehand.
Pembroke Primary