It is very important that children are exposed to the correct terminology so they understand correctly what they are learning and can articulate where they are struggling. All staff understand and use the following terminology with children when teaching.
Phoneme/ Sound The smallest identifiable sound of speech.
Grapheme / Code The letter/s used to represent the sound.
Digraph A phoneme represented by 2 letters (e.g. ch, sh, oa, ay)
Trigraph A phoneme represented by 3 letters (e.g. igh, ear)
Split Digraph Two letters that represent one phoneme but are split by another letter (e.g. a-e in cake)
Blending When reading a word, identify the graphemes in the word and say the corresponding sounds in order to hear the word as a whole. E.g. read sh – o – p = shop
Segmenting When spelling a word, break it down into the sounds you hear and write the grapheme for each identified sound. E.g. say shop = writing sh – o – p
Decode Breaking a word down into sounds to be able to read it.
Encode Breaking a word down into sounds to be able to spell it.
Sight words These are common or high frequency words with unusual spelling rules which means they can’t be decoded easily. Children will learn to recognise these words by sight and be able to recall them with automaticity.
Helpful words These are a list of words that the children will frequently encounter in their reading as well as words that are covered as part of the Floppy’s Phonics Helpful Words Poster.
In addition to the specific terminology used, children are also exposed to a range of blending and oral segmenting core strategies to develop their understanding of phonemes and graphemes. Strategies will be modelled by teaching staff and opportunities provided for children to practise these skills independently to secure their knowledge.
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oral segmenting | Blending | Alphabetic code flashcards | Cumulative Text |
| Tally sounds identified through the spoken words to thumb and fingers of the left hand, palm facing | Pointing finger to track under the graphemes all through the printed word | Flashcards using the alphabetic code |
