Phonics

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

How do people go about including phonics in their planning? I have a lot of non-specialists in my school (19 to be precise!!!) and need to include it on the planning to ensure it is done. We use Early Start Spanish (y3), German (y4) and French (year 5 + 6) and Rigolo (year 5+ 6).

Any ideas?

Thanks

Jog On

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

Hi Jog-On!

Apologies for moving this blog post into discussion/forum, hopefully there will be more replies this way and a discussion may develop....
I think you may have looked already at Using KS1 Phonics techniques to teach languages, there is an example of including phonics in a lesson in Teaching Colours in Year 1 and in QCA Unit 16 - La Plage ideas and resources. Hopefully they show that I personally wouldn't spend an entire lesson on phonemes, but I do try to include at least one at the beginning of each lesson, as practice. Also whenever I introduce new vocabulary I break it down into phonemes with the class and we practise the sound/gesture together to make sure we really are pronouncing the word correctly. We might 'mexican wave' the phoneme, or pass a sack of letters around the class with each child taking out a letter and adding it to the sound eg 'ou' might be dou, fou, sou etc.. Because my class is mixed age and experience, the idea is to keep jogging their memories about sounds, to the point where they even start to recognise them in written form and 'read' the target language accurately even when they may not be certain of the meaning - exactly as they learn to read in English.
In long term planning I tend to include a certain phoneme to practise for a whole unit, but still refer to others we have learnt as we go along. So they learn 'on' and pinch their noses as they make the sound, right from the very first lesson when we learn 'bonjour', and I encourage the younger children to then continue to listen out for that phoneme as we continue through the term. Then in a later lesson they might be picking out the 'on' sound (and making the gesture) in a poem or song that they have already heard in a different context perhaps. By the time they have reached yr 6 I give the children little log books (spelling books) where they list words that they find according to their phoneme sounds, as they might in Literacy make notes of spellings - depending on what techniques you use in your school/class. Catherine Cheater has a sort of spelling log along these sort of lines on her site you can download and photocopy for help/ideas.

How do others incorporate phonics?

[Helen]

Hiya i have started doing a similar thing really- but not every lesson. More as and when really -which isn't the right way i'm sure. I started a thing that we use in class and add to every time we use/see a relevant word/sound. Unfortunately we don't use it as often as we should! Did see in one of my classes a 'graffitti' board that the children were using to 'note' ideas on for literacy- they could write what and when they wanted (more or less) Did think 'I'm sure I can use that in Spanish lessons!' Perhaps that'd be one way to record words/ sounds.

[kristie williamson]

hi jog on, i have been teaching my self to teach phonics for the last year or so, and now include it as part of every class - i only see my s's once a week. i found lots of free resources on the net, s's have been making sound flashcards as we go. it's a long term process, you must constantly review and you can't move too fast, i stick with the same sound for 4 - 5 lessons, while reviewing sounds previously learnt at the same time. i think it makes a big difference to reading and pron as well.

kris

[John Sly]

Le Manuel Phonique published by Jolly Learning and available on Amazon is an excellent tool, full of resources and ideas. Hope this helps. There are lots of gamesand songs you can use. Have six phonemes posted up around the room, in the hall or playground if it's warmer. Divide class into 4-6 teams. When they hear a word one person (selected) from each team runs to the phoneme. Last one there is out. You can use words with more than phoneme that you've selected to make it more challenging.

[Calistan]

Hi,
sure that you know bbc primary spanish but maybe you could look at here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryspanish/learn_more/sounds/

I'm a Spanish . I'm doing a blog for teachers, maybe you can find something interesting for your lessons:
http://pequele.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Calistan