Letters and Sounds

[AnonyMouse_5970]

How do you organise / plan / implement Letters and Sounds?

Do you have L and S activities every day? Do you do this in groups or as a whole?

How long do you take over each aspect? I looked at an example of planning (not on this forum) which had activities every day and whizzed through one aspect a week, so phase 1 was 'done' in seven weeks. This seems too fast to me so I wondered what everyone else did?

Thanks in advance! By the way, I am thinking about pre-school aged children.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Beehive

[Guest]

We have L&S every day immediately after registration. We have 3 members of staff so we have 3 different ability groups. Whilst we 'work' on one aspect per week it is revisited 6 times throughout the year - I don't feel that we 'whizz' through it though! I personally think that it is better to re-visit the aspects over the year than to work on one aspect for a longer period of time. I think some do one aspect per half-term, but then you can only really work at it once per year. We do L&S outside of the formal sessions of course, but very much during C.I. play.

Each member of staff has a different group each half-term and the sessions last approx 10-15 mins.

Hope that helps.

x

[AnonyMouse_5970]

Thank you DevonMaid that makes a lot of sense. From what I had read, I thought one aspect a week seemed too fast, but revisiting over the year must help embed the learning for the children. Thanks!

[Guest]

we do one aspect per week, with one focussed activity each day as part of the choosing time section of our session. The children quickly grasp the games and soon show progress when we come back to them 6 weeks later

[AnonyMouse_3307]

Phase 1 doesn't have a time frame, except that it is ideal if children have secured phase 1 before starting in reception, where phase 2 and 3 need to be completed before year 1 if the children are to have the security in their skills to tackle the phonics screening. If they are secure in phase 1, especially in aspect 7 they will go on to learn the PGCs quite quickly usually.

Cx

[AnonyMouse_44055]

I am in a school nursery, we work on phase one throughout the year. My experience so far has been that when they first arrive many of our children are nowhere near ready to sit down for a formal L&S session on a daily basis. We plan to increase the frequency of L&S as the year progresses but at the beginning we will have one or two weekly activities which we will do with the children in small groups e.g. an adult will take two or three children at a time on a listening walk. Some of the activities like action songs and rhyming books will be the first whole group sessions we do but other activities will be done in small groups and of course there are lots of opportunities during child initiated activity to bring in elements of L&S as well.

 

Mel

x

[AnonyMouse_5970]

Thanks for sharing your expertise everyone. I think we'll go for one aspect a week and revisiting throughout the year.

[AnonyMouse_3307]

If you think about the stages of development within the aspects you do need to be doing the tuning in and talking about stages as well before the third one which I can't remember!! This all takes time - children may well be tuning in to environmental and other sounds for a while before they can start to process and actually individualise the sounds they hear so each aspect is a matrix really of the aspects and then the stages of building up security in the aspect. All of which, without my copy of phase 1 is probably not making sense!!

Cx

[AnonyMouse_5664]

If you think about the stages of development within the aspects you do need to be doing the tuning in and talking about stages as well before the third one which I can't remember!! This all takes time - children may well be tuning in to environmental and other sounds for a while before they can start to process and actually individualise the sounds they hear so each aspect is a matrix really of the aspects and then the stages of building up security in the aspect. All of which, without my copy of phase 1 is probably not making sense!!

Cx

Hello! Me again! I have usually started with Aspect 1 at the beginning of the year and worked through to Aspect 7, blending and segmenting, at the end of the year, as this seems much more challenging. Do you mean this isn't the most effective approach?

[AnonyMouse_3307]

We always say aspects 6 and 7 build on the skills of the other 5 - so our CLLD lead advises settings and schools to really focus on aspects 1-5 first and embed the 3 stages then build into aspects 6 and 7 as children have the skills of tuning into speech sounds more embedded. This wouldn't stop you from modelling and using skills in aspects 6 and 7 though along the way.

 

But if it works for your children then it works! There's no correct way to do it.

Cx