Phonics and Reading
Monster Phonics
At Galley Common Infant School we follow the Monster Phonics scheme.
What is Phonics?
The 26 letters of the alphabet and combinations of these letters make 44 speech sounds in English. The 44 sounds (phonemes) are spelt by 144 different letter combinations (graphemes). For example, the sound O is spelt 6 different ways: o (no), o-e (home), oa (boat), ow (snow), oe (toe) and ou (though).
What is Monster Phonics?
Monster Phonics makes learning to read and spell through phonics easier, by categorising the 44 sounds into 10 categories and each of these 10 categories are represented by a Monster. Each Monster is a different colour, and this colour represents that way of spelling the sound. This makes learning to read and spell much easier and more fun.
Why does Monster Phonics improve learning?
The child learns through the assignment of colour and the linkage of the sound, as well as seeing the colour, creating more ways of remembering the spelling.
The games, songs and activities within the programme continuously reflect this way of learning, so that structure is constantly seen, heard and experienced by your child.
This consistency is critical in ensuring that a complicated language is learnt in the most simplistic way.
High-frequency words are learnt much faster with Monster Phonics. These words make up 65% of the words used in reading
1. Once colour-coded, high-frequency words can be taught in easy to learn sets of similar words. This significantly improves spelling.
2. With colour-coding non-decodable words become decodable. Children are no longer told that words like ‘they’ and ‘my’ are tricky as they can be decoded.
For more information about Home Learning with Monster Phonics and more information/ resources please go to:
https://monsterphonics.com/helping-parents-to-support-their-children/
Each week we will let you know in your child’s reading diary; which book is our focus for the week.
Thank you for taking the time to share these books with your child.
