Writing

It is very easy to over support your child when helping them with their writing. Below are a few tips to support you in supporting your child.

Writing letter sounds/ diagraphs/trigraphs

If your child is unsure how to write the letter- ask them what the ditty is?

Eg. a- round the apple and down the leaf

(these can be found on the resources section on your child’s class page.)

Can they spot it on the sound card? (you can find a copy of this in the resource section on your child’s class page)

Allow them to have a couple of goes and then show them. We don’t want them to become disengaged/frustrated.

Writing words

Ask them to sound out the sounds they can hear in the words. Eg: mat m-a-t

Encourage them to put the sounds on to their fingers

(See picture below)

Then to write the sounds down they can hear.

For shorter words like the words above, we would encourage the children to listen to all of the sounds. For slightly longer words, they may not be able to decipher all of the sounds and that is ok! Eg: snail they may write snl.  They may also have not learnt some of the trickier/unusual sounds Eg: Grasshopper- they may write grshopr

The words we suggest during the phonics sessions are words that the children should be able to write using the sounds they have been taught. So, we encourage the children to write the word and then we place a tick under the sounds for each correct sound. If they have missed a sound. We place a line and then ask them to write the missing sound. Then we may rewrite the word correctly for the children to see.

(Try not to write it for them- for them to copy. This is helpful for supporting their letter formation and helping them with the recognition of the sound but not for the skill of spelling/writing words.)

When writing sentences

We encourage the children to count the words on their fingers eg: I went to the park = 5 words

We then ask them to repeat it several times and when writing the sentence if they get stuck, we encourage them to repeat the sentence.

They may still need to use all the techniques as above too.