Introduction to SSP - Module 4 slide outlines

1.     Phonics

Phonics is the relationship between speech sounds and the letter or letters that represent those sounds. Two types of phonics listed here are:

  • Analytic phonics
  • Synthetic phonics.

2.     Types of phonics

Analytic phonics

  • Starts with whole words or larger units.
  • Relies on analysis of words to discover phoneme-grapheme correspondences.
  • Generally utilises look/say or ‘natural’ texts that contain a broad range of representations.

Synthetic phonics

  • Starts with phonemes.
  • Promotes teaching phoneme-grapheme correspondences directly and explicitly.
  • Instruction includes use of ‘decodable’ texts that are controlled for phonics knowledge and text complexity and matched to student’s current level of reading development.

3.     What’s included

Whole-school Systematic Synthetic Phonics approach

[Image:

Image 1: Chart illustrating the Alphabetic Code.

Image 2: Example chart from ‘Reading Success in Action’ – Phonics Lesson, Decoding 1 (by Jocelyn Seamer).

The slide shows a sequence of six steps in a lesson: Introduce the phoneme; Introduce the grapheme; Review previously learned graphemes; Demonstrate writing the new grapheme; Display words and ask students to read them; Write the word.]

4.     What’s included

Decodable texts for all beginning readers

[Image: shows a range of titles available for beginning readers.

Includes example titled ‘Decoding Dragon keeps the Guessing Monster away!’ with a list of strategies:

  • Don’t guess!
  • Sound the word all the way through.
  • Keep track with your finger.
  • Break long words into syllables.]

5.     What’s included

Reading and spelling are taught as reciprocal processes

[Image: the word ‘match’ is on a card to be read.

The same word is written on a whiteboard in front of the student.]

6.     What’s included

Reading progress is measured using tools other than benchmark assessment aligned with a levelled reading program.

[Image: examples of informal phonics assessment tools and a sample page from the Year 1 Phonics Check.]

7.     Learning a new sound

A chart showing five steps to learning a new sound.

  1. Learn new sound. Show the card for the new sound. Say the sound and have your child repeat it. Do this several times.
  2. Practise reading previously taught sounds. Show cards for sounds children have already learned, working on getting faster as they read them.
  3. Read 3 words with the new sound. Support children to sound out words that have the new sound.
  4. Read 3 words with sounds already taught. Support children to read words with sounds they have previously learned.
  5. Support children to sound out words and write them down. Firstly with the new sound and then with previously learned sounds.

We want children paying attention to the internal structure of the word – not trying to read it by sight.

 8.     The Alphabetic Code

[Image: there are two pages from the Alphabetic Code (Phonics International, 2007). Graphemes are listed in table form with the following headings:

  • Sounds and picture prompts
  • Complex code; graphemes (spelling alternatives) which are the code for the sounds

Examples given are:

s: snake, palace, house, cents, city, bicycle, glass, scissors, castle, pseudonym

a: apple

t: tent, letter, skipped

i: insect, cymbals

p: pan, puppet

n: net, bonnet, knot, gnome, engine

k: kit, cat, duck, chameleon, bouquet, plaque

e: egg, head, said, again

h: hat, who

r: rat, arrow, write, rhinoceros

m: map, hammer, welcome, thumb, column

d: dig, puddle, rained

g: girl, juggle, guitar, ghost, catalogue

o: octopus, watch, qualify, salt

u: umbrella, son, touch, thoroughfare

l: ladder, shell

ul: kettle, pencil, hospital, camel

f: feathers, cliff, photograph, laugh

b: bat, rabbit, building

j: jug, cabbage, gerbil, giraffe, gymnast, fridge

y: yawn

ai: aid, table, sundae, cakes, tray, prey, eight, break, straight

w: web, wheel, penguin

igh: night, tie, behind, shy, bike, eider duck]

9.     Irregular words

[Image:

  • The word ‘the’ is handwritten, with ‘th’ underlined in green, and ‘e’ circled in red.
  • Page from Really Great Reading resource, breaking the word ‘said’ up into the sounds: s, ai, d. A heart marks ‘ai’.
  • Page from Secret Stories resource. Page is titled ‘The Sight Word Parade!’ ‘Sight Word’ has been crossed out and replaced with ‘Secrets’. The words listed are: the, how, for, she, my, her.]

10. Decodable texts

[Image: examples of decodable texts.]

11. Predictable and decodable texts

[Image: the slide shows pages from two school reader books. On the left is a predictable text; on the right is a decodable text. 

Predictable text

Dad laughed. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘We can’t go fishing today!’ 

‘But we can have a picnic in the boat,’ said Rosie. ‘This is not a fishing boat today. This is a picnic boat!’

Irregular words are circled in red. There are seven lines of text and most words are circled; one line has all the words circled. The words listed are:

laughed, oh, dear, he, said, we, can’t, go, today, have, a, boat, Rosie, is 

Decodable text

Mama hen and the chicks went to the pond. Mama hen and Sam and Chip and Dan and Ben and Mag pecked up lots of grubs from the mud. 

The duckchick flapped his long wings, stretched his long neck, and ‘Splash!’ jumped into the pond. He pecked up some crusts. 

‘Cluck!’ went Mama hen, shocked. 

‘Cluck!’ went Sam, and Chip, and Dan, and Ben, and Mag. 

‘Quack!’ went the duckchick.

Irregular words are circled in red. There are nine lines of text with very few words circled on each line; one line has no words circled. The words listed are:

the, to, of, his, into, he, some, Mama]

12. Learning a new sound

A chart showing five steps to learning a new sound.

  1. Learn new sound. Show the card for the new sound. Say the sound and have your child repeat it. Do this several times.
  2. Practise reading previously taught sounds. Show cards for sounds children have already learned, working on getting faster as they read them.
  3. Read 3 words with the new sound. Support children to sound out words that have the new sound.
  4. Read 3 words with sounds already taught. Support children to read words with sounds they have previously learned.
  5. Support children to sound out words and write them down. Firstly with the new sound and then with previously learned sounds.

Include reading and spelling with the same focus grapheme in every phonics lesson.

13. Images of various assessment resources

[Image: 

  • Resources by Jocelyn Seamer and Motif (Macquarie University)
  • Samples from the Year 1 Phonics Check featuring both real and pseudo words
  • Sparkle; Read Write Inc Phonics; Little Learners Love Literacy
  • Dibels 8th edition (University of Oregon); Neale analysis of reading ability]

14. Let’s recap

  • Systematic synthetic phonics is not an add on to a balanced literacy approach, but a complete framework in and of itself.
  • The main focus of systematic synthetic phonics is the explicit teaching of the full alphabetic code and includes both blending and segmenting of words in every lesson.
  • To support students to develop efficient reading skills, students are provided with decodable texts that contain graphemes and irregular high frequency words they know. We do not want children guessing words from contextual or semantic cues.
  • Assessment focuses on monitoring the development of fundamental skills and then shifts to norm-referenced assessment of text level reading.

15. Acknowledgements

Alphabetic Code © 2020 Debbie Hepplewhite and Phonics International

McMillan D (2021) The picnic boat, Thomson Learning, Melbourne

Munton G (2016) The duckchick, Oxford University Press UK, Oxford