Talk to me about phonics

[ViaRia01]

My eldest son will start primary school in September 2026. I’ve heard before that it’s better to leave teaching of phonics to the teachers unless you know enough about it to explain things properly.

What do I need to know to help my child understand and make sure I don’t cause confusion later on when he starts school.

I’ve heard parents should find out what phonics scheme the school uses. Can someone explain that to me? What is a phonics scheme and how do they differ from one another.

Any others thoughts, tips or information that you can share, would be most appreciate. Thanks

Learning phonics isn't really the priority at this stage. Soft school ready skills like putting on his coat, recognising his name on water bottle, peg etc, playing with other children, asking for help and sitting still to listen to a short story are things you can work on between now and September.

This is true.

But if you do want to also start on reading then the key things are:
. use letter sounds not names
. don't say for example 'muh' say 'mmm'

Try Alphablocks on Cbeebies / youtube

Even I spy is a great start. I spy with my little eye something beginning with 'sss' Sandwich.

Good advice from PP about personal skills: mananging clothes/shoes, able to go to loo independently, manage cutlery and eat a range of foods, sit quietly, listen to instructions, recognising his name in print (e.g. on a board or nametag)

If your DS doesn't already know numbers and letters you could start teaching them to him.
Phonics is about the sounds the letters make and many reception/primary classes don't learn the 'names' of the letters but call them by the sounds they make so:
Ah, buh, kuh, duh, eh
kicky kuh = K
If your DS already knows the letters by their names, don't worry, he'll pick up the 'phonics' side of things easily.

Thanks all for taking the time to reply.

@Adventing are you a teacher?

I’m also asking partly because I would like to understand it better myself, so that I’m prepared for when he starts school as he may come home and ask questions etc.

We’ve always played I-spy as ‘something the colour of….’ But we’ve recently switched to ‘something that starts with’ so we will keep on with that.

I just feel it would be good for me to have a bit of an overview so that I am not, for example, saying ‘something that starts with MAH’, as opposed to “mmm”.

Can anyone recommend any resources aimed at parents. And confirm whether resources need to be specific to the relevant phonics scheme?

Thanks again

@ViaRia01 I'm a teacher though not EYFS, the general consenus from Reception teachers though seems to be that children don't need to learn phonics before starting school.

As others have said though AlphaBlocks is good as is Numberblocks. Singing nursery rhymes and reading books that rhyme as well as listening to stories and talking about what happens in them are all good things too. You could find out what scheme school uses (probably Read Write Inc or Little Wandle) but Alphablocks for example isn't specific to a particular scheme and doesn't need to be. Be aware of resources that use letter names rather than phonic sounds or American resources (e.g. songs on Youtube) where the accent will change the phonic sound.

I mainly focused on what sounds were at the start of words etc, and vowel sounds. I made it into little games. Although I think I always used the sounds of letters and combinations of letters (common and 'easier' ones like sh, ee and oo) and didn't really use the names of the letters so the alphabet song wasn't very big in this house. If I got any of it wrong it's not been an issue. It's a completely natural way to approach words in the same way it's natural to count stairs with your kid as they go up or down them.

We also used an app called Read With Phonics which had a wee alien character which she really liked. We started that in Covid before she started school, it was a fun wee app. There were some minor issues as highlighted above re accent differences - this was an English accent app and we're Glaswegian but it was easy enough to explain that to her.

Ring/email the school and ask what reading scheme they follow. Then look it up on Youtube and there will be someone doing a demonstration. The sounds aren't identical between the differing schemes but very very similar. You can't go wrong with this I don't think:

BUT I certainly wouldn't go out of your way to teach him, just tell him the letter sounds if he asks what a letter is when he sees one. As a nanny I say 'That letter is a 'Dee', it makes the 'Duh' sound' etc, so introducing the name and sound together, which is probably a bit confusing but they have to learn the letter names too at some point!

I think the reason to stick to sounds only is you don't know which children will be confused by being told both name and sound until it is too late. So you play safe and just do sounds to start with.

If you look at your schools website it should say on there under ‘curriculum’ as to what scheme they use, Read Write Inc (RWI)
Jolly Phonics or Rocket Phonics ( probably others as well) RWI have videos online and you can google the others as to how the sounds are explained/spoken

This

My son just started primary school and I waited to find out what scheme they use. I didn't bother too much about phonics beforehand I focused on working with him the other bits they need them to do by primary - how to get dressed/undressed, put coat on/off, apply suncream (his teachers aren't allowed to apply it) how to hold a pen/pencil, washing/drying hands properly, taking shoes on/off

Ours school uses monster phonics so I have now been learning what they are so that when he comes home and mentions the phonics he has been learning about I can work with him on it or if we use words in normal conversations and inknow which monster phonic it belongs to I point it out and we discuss that monsters sounds

Recently retired Phonics Lead here. As others have said, find the scheme the school are using, there should be parent videos to support you. All schemes use the same sounds (they are the phonemes of the English language) but will use different rhymes or mnemonics to help children remember them and may learn them in a different order. It’s important that you know what these are (once your child starts school) so that you use the same ones. The whole point of a phonics scheme is to reduce cognitive load for small children. The school will use books that are decodable for the sounds learned, but please also get your child into reading by using real books too! At this stage rhyme and rhythm are the things to enjoy together.

@ViaRia01 once you know the scheme your school uses you can, if you want buy some sound cards online - I know Little Wandle and Read, Write Inc both sell home packs on Amazon.

I am a teacher, and have taught Rec and KS1 for many years so I helped my son a bit a long the way too. The key is to not get too ahead of the school. My son's school use Little Wandle and each week we were sent a sheet with what they have covered so we knew what to reinforce at home.

Now that we are in the second half term, they will start to introduce the high frequency words including the tricky words (ones which can't be sounded out i.e. don't follow the phonics rules like 'was' and 'said'.

I found foam bath letters (lowercase) really useful, when he was learning his name, and now when he's learning phonics. I'd just put 3 or 4 letters on the side bath or wall, if that's what they're learning, and then the digraphs they began learning as well as the high frequency words. He's in Y1 now so it's mainly bigger words and ones containing the new digraphs they're learning.

It's important to not make it onerous. For us, 3 or 4 words on the bath is enough for him to practise each time.

Hoping this link works. This is dull but clear on the pronunciation. Useful for parents, not children!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IwJx1NSineE

The phonics schemes introduce the sounds in slightly different ways/order.

My ds started school with no knowledge of phonics and unable to recognise letters at all (I did try a bit and so did his nursery but it didn’t stick).

Following the phonic scheme at school has been perfect for my DS. His school did Read Write Inc and it was very easy to follow - school sent home videos on Google classroom every week so we could practice the sounds, and later on also worksheets or little phonics books to read. It never felt like hard work, just a few minutes several days a week and lots of practice reading the common exception words (words that don’t follow phonic rules like “said” or “she”) once he started to meet those.

DS started year 2 as a band 9/gold band reader which is the level expected in Y2-Y3 so we feel he has really caught on and I’m a big fan of phonics.

I would just wait until they start school and follow their lead. I have DC in Y1 and R and didn’t do anything prior to them starting school. In the first term the school then ran a session for parents on how they teach phonics and supporting information.

Elder DC has really taken to reading and doing brilliantly so not necessarily any benefit in starting early tbh.

Also you can practice oral/aural blending. Model first “d-o-g dog”. Then get child to answer. Then get them to the segmenting, so you say dog and the segment into sounds. You can do this with loads of words, I used to do it with my son when out walking.

I did this with my kids before they went to school. One could even sound out 4 letter words like frog. Learning colours, numbers shapes would help. My 4 could even write their own name before they went to school.

They are definitely not "buh, kuh, duh"!

As PP said, you should not be adding the "uh" sound. This is called a schwa and it is not part of the sound the letter makes.

"Buh ah duh" wouldn't spell bad. It's really important we try to avoid adding the "uh" sound.

People always say they dont need to learn phonics before school- which is true but if the child is showing an interest and it naturally develops then I don't think its wrong to teach it.

My son is 3 (coming up to 4) and we started learning the phonics sounds with letter jigsaws a while ago. In the last couple of months he has started being able to sound out and blend words (this just seemed to 'click' suddenly) and I have some Biff/Chip/Kipper books we look at - for 5 minutes a day maybe, with no pressure! I'm really enjoying teaching him

I'd say the most important thing is make sure you use the 'pure' sounds for letters. Talk about what words start with. Look at his name and spell that out phonetically, my son learnt this quite quickly. Also he really likes the wipe clean books for tracing letters and numbers.

I dont agree with 'don't do phonics, focus on softer skills instead' - you can definitely learn phonics as well as other skills! My son can dress himself/take turns/wash his hands ect, as well as learn about numbers and letters naturally throughout the day.

Hmmmm. Personally I disagree. The fact is that despite all the "all they need to know how to do is put on a coat" brigade (which is true) there will be plenty of parents who have taught their kids to read / write / count etc. Both our DC started school reading and counting and whilst yeah, they had to redo stuff in school, the teacher did differentiate for them. What it did do is boost their confidence because they knew it, gave them a headstart with the teacher and marked them as capable kids within the school.

I don’t necessarily feel I must teach him all about phonics and how to read before he starts school. I would like to introduce letter sounds correctly and use the right terminology. I would also like to know a bit about it myself so that, when he is taught at school later on, I am not on the back foot.

He had some great feedback from his preschool yesterday but very slightly behind in writing. Not something that I’m very worried about but coincidentally I had picked up an alphablocks book yesterday (where you use a whiteboard pen to trace the letters in the book). So if he starts getting into his letters, I’d just like to make sure I am correctly pronouncing the letter sounds etc.

@ThesebeautifulthingsthatIvegot this is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to make sure I get right. I’ve heard it’s better to not make the sounds hard like buh dah fuh. But I that case what is the right way to sound out the letter sounds.

Thanks to PPs for the advice to check which phonics scheme is used by the school and where I could find some resources for parents

Op I think a pp mentioned it but if you Google 'pure phonics' there are lots of explanations of how to pronounce the letter sounds.
I think my dcs picked up (all) the sounds from the ancient Jolly Phonics videos being played to them at nursery and then them demanding them on repeat at home. (They are on YouTube).

Look up 'thephonicsfairy' on Instagram, she does of videos for parents from preschool to Y2 on how to help with phonics, reading and writing.

I'm a Reception teacher. I think most people have covered it already, but I didn't want to read and run.

The reason it's best to hold off formally teaching children phonics, before they start school, is simply so as not to confuse them. Some parents won't use pure sounds (suh, muh, ruh etc, instead of sss, mmm and rrr). Also, you don't want your child to become bored if they end up repeating the learning they already know in Reception.

It's much better to work on phonemic awareness before they start school, which will help them hit the ground running with reading and writing. Phonemic awareness is all about being aware of different sounds and listening out for the different sounds in words. So being able to identify the first sound, followed eventually by the other sounds which make up the word.

Oral blending comes first, before children learn to read. You can prepare your child for learning to read by sounding out instructions to him (eg go and find your h-a-t, put it in the b-i-n, sit on the m-a-t). He'll soon tune in and understand what you mean, with lots of visuals and repetition to support. Play lots of oral blending games too. You can play a cvc version of I-Spy (you sound out the object and see if he can point to it, eg I-spy with my little eye a d-o-g, a t-a-p, a b-e-d etc). Another game we play a lot is Simon says, sounding out body parts (stamp your f-oo-t, touch your b-a-ck, point to your ch-i-n, shake your h-ea-d etc). Or have fun making animal noises (eg what noise does a p-i-g make? What about a c-a-t?). What's in the bag? (Have a selection of random CVC items from around the house and sound them out for him to identify, eg in the bag is a c-u-p).

Children who have phonemic awareness usually take to reading (and writing) like a duck to water once they start school, as they've already had plenty of practice blending and segmenting sounds in words before they're even introduced to the written representation of each sound.

If you want to get more clued up on pure sounds, and how to teach blending, there are lots of videos on YouTube. Most phonics schemes are broadly similar, they might just vary the order they introduce the sounds. It's a huge money making ploy to be honest. Years back, we all taught the free government scheme 'Letters and Sounds'. Then people discovered it was a huge money spinner to invent their own scheme, costing schools thousands of pounds in training and resources which are all broadly similar. I wouldn't get too hung up on schemes to be honest. Wait until your child has their place confirmed, then you can read up on the scheme they use. They're all pretty generic though.