Smart Phonics integrates reading connections in the brain through teaching:
Colour-coded letter-to-sound rules to build the upper reading circuit in the brain.
Whole words, meaning and syntax from poetry based shared reading to build the lower reading circuit in the brain.
Explicit phonemic awareness instruction through manipulating colour-coded tiles to connect upper and lower reading circuits in the brain.
The above chart shows the progression of phonemes taught through the three manuals. Letter to sound rules are colour-coded so that students will recognise the common phoneme groupings. By progressing through the system (from yellow consonants to the purple r controlled vowels) students can see a logical pattern emerge and quickly gain confidence in decoding and understanding phonics rules.
IV Using Smart Phonics USING SMART PHONICS ck ff ll ng ss Manual Two Year 1/Year 2 ch sh th wh a e i o u bdfhj klmnpqr stvwxyz c g Manual One Reception/Year 1 scr shr spl squ str thr Manual Three Year 2/Year 3 ai au aw ay ee ew ie igh oa oi oy ue ea ow ou oo y ar are air er ir or oor ur a_e i_e o_e u_e bl br cl cr dr fl fr gl gr pl pr sc sl sk sm sn sp st sw tr tw ft ld lk mp nch nd nk nt sk st sp Consonants Digraph beginnings Digraph ends Blend beginnings Blend beginnings Vowel Digraphs Changeable Vowel Sounds Controlled Vowel Sounds Magic e Blend endings Vowels Consonants two sounds ar star ea ea beach bread oa boat a e cake scr scrub sh shell a c c cat cat city a cat bl nd blend ll shell blend
In each Smart Phonics manual the teaching of each letter/sound is supported by the following:
Poems
There are 30 or more poems in each manual written for shared reading purposes. Students join in with the reading of each poem and are later encouraged to re-read part or all of the text. On one side of the large write and wipe poem cards the target phoneme is colour-coded. As students become confident with the target phoneme, the reverse side, without colour coding, can be used. Reproducable masters for each of the large poems are included in this manual for individual work.
Teacher Guide Notes
The Teacher Guide Note pages for each letter/sound are divided into the following sections:
Consolidation activities
This section focuses on re-reading a known poem to review skills taught as well as developing fluency and reading rate. Research has shown repeated reading increases automaticity, improves comprehension and builds students confidence.
Phonological Patterns
Questions are provided to help develop students' phonemic awareness skills. They focus on letter/sound relationships, rhyme, letter patterns within words, onset and rime etc. Students are encouraged to explore and analyse the way words sound and are spelt.
Vocabulary
The rich vocabulary in the poems encourages students to focus on a number of language forms, e.g. interest words, homophones, antonyms and synonyms, compound words, nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.
The first 45 High Frequency Words have been included in the poems in Manual One. Focus sight words have been written in bold in the guide notes ensuring that all 45 will be covered by the end of the manual.
The next 120 High Frequency Words are covered in Manuals Two and Three.
Print Conventions
Various print conventions are used in the poems and can be used as learning points, e.g. capital letter, full stop, question mark etc.
Thinking Critically
These thought provoking questions have been specifically written to develop students' comprehension skills, and stimulate critical thinking and discussion. They can be used as conversation starting points and are written to encourage students to be active, social and reflective thinkers.
Extension Activities
These varied and creative activities are designed to extend and challenge more able students.
V USING SMART PHONICS
Poem Teacher Guide Notes Word Work Activities Activity Sheet Game Assessment Task
Word Work Activities
The phonemic awareness activities are based around the specific letter/sound introduced in the poem. By manipulating magnetic tiles (from the Using Phonics Effectively set), students can apply the operations of phonemic awareness in a visual, kinaesthetic and auditory manner. For group activities the notes can also be used to support activities from the DfES publication, Progression in Phonics
There are six different phonemic awareness operations that vary in their degree of difficulty as shown in the table below:
Operation
Matching
USING SMART PHONICS
Example
Do big and bat start with the same sound?
Isolation What is the middle sound in dog?
Substitution Change the st sound in stay with a pl sound.
Blending Bring these sounds together h - a - n - d Segmenting What are the sounds in run? r - u - n
Deletion Say late without the l sound
Phonemic awareness activities can be introduced under a scaffolding approach. This allows teachers to provide strategic support that decreases over time. When a student is first introduced to phonemic awareness the teacher may need to sound out and manipulate sounds for the student. In time, the student will become capable of more sophisticated manipulations without teacher support.
The lilac tiles in Using Phonics Effectively are the rimes/phonograms. These rimes are usually consistent and can be used with other tiles to form word families and practise phonemic awareness operations, (such as deletion and substitution).
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Games
A game has been included for each of the sections covered in this manual. These games reinforce the letter/sounds in a fun and interactive way. Reproducible masters of these games are also included in this manual for playing in pairs.
Assessment Tasks
These assessment tasks evaluate students' letter/sound knowledge and can be used for both diagnostic and summative purposes. They provide teachers with valuable assessment data as well as requiring students to self-evaluate their own knowledge and progress.
Student needs work on o letter formation.
Student needs work on the letter/sound a.
This section can be filled in by the teacher or by the student after the teacher has evaluated the assessment task.
VII USING SMART PHONICS
a e i o u vowels How am I going? Listen carefully to the vowel sound in each word and then write it in the gap. m p c t b d z p h t s n b x b t b g h n p g l g c p p n d g Name: Now tick the boxes below for the letter/sounds that you know: aeiou Vowel Valley Vowel Vowel Valley Vowel Finish Start mop bed zip hat boy bug bat sun box pig cup pin dog van fox hen net rug leg cat Roll the dice to see how many number of squares to move forward. If you can point to the picture that matches the word on the square you landed on you can stay. But if you can't you must go back to the square you started your turn on. YOU WILL NEED: 1 counter per player 1 dice
Lesson Plan
Assess the needs/abilities of your students and plan your own timetable for teaching the letter/sound relationships.
Many teachers prefer to teach letters and their sounds in relation to handwriting lessons. The Teacher Guide Notes have been written with this idea in mind and include a full range of teaching possibilities under each subheading. These teaching possibilities are suggestions only and teachers are free to select those skills appropriate to their students' needs. For planning purposes, the guide notes can be photocopied and the selected skills highlighted. This effective and efficient method will save teachers considerable planning time.
Each letter can be covered in one to five lessons depending on the student's ability.
Refer to the Teacher Guide Notes for the specific activities related to the poem. Further suggestions for lesson planning are shown below:
Read a known or favourite poem before teaching the new poem. Discuss with students the illustrations, ideas and message in the poem.
Through asking questions, draw the students' attention to the colour-coded letter/sound.
Encourage students to predict what the poem may be about. Extract and analyse the language in the poem before reading it through. Read the poem to the students, pointing to words and modelling fluency and expression.
Invite students to join in reading the poem. Have fun and play with the poem and its language.
Discuss interest and nonsense words and their meanings. Discuss the rhyming words and letter patterns in the poem and add to these. Select the Focus High Frequency Words for students to identify and circle. Reread the poem with different students playing 'teacher' and clapping the rhythm of the poem. Review letter/sound focus. Complete the activities on the Word Work Activities page getting students to manipulate the Using Phonics Effectively magnetic tiles.
Give students the Activity Sheet based upon the letter/sound focus in the poem. If appropriate, complete any extension activities.
Give students the Reproducible Poem. Students to highlight or circle the target phoneme and objects that begin with the letter/sound focus. Poems are then glued into their poetry books or scrapbooks. Each student reads the poem to a buddy. Students take home the poem to read with family members.
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