Aspect 1 – General sound discrimination – environmental
The aim of this aspect is to raise children’s awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills.
In provision the children spend lots of time outside. Practitioners draw attention to the sounds of the Nursery and town including the different traffic sounds.
Focused activities are planned periodically and include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds.
Aspect 2 – General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds
This aspect aims to develop children’s awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers.
In provision the children have access to a range of instruments inside and outside and practitioners support children to use them in a range of ways.
Focused activities are planned periodically and include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a song or story and making loud and quiet sounds.
Aspect 3 – General sound discrimination – body percussion
The aim of this aspect is to develop children’s awareness of sounds and rhythms.
Focused activities for this aspect are included every week and include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.
Our focused songs in Nursery include key action songs
Aspect 4 – Rhythm and rhyme
This aspect aims to develop children’s appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech.
Our focused stories include rhyming stories
Focused activities, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.
Aspect 5 – Alliteration
The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.
We focus on Aspect 5 in Spring and Summer in Butterfly class with children moving to school in the summer term
Aspect 6 – Voice sounds
The aim is to create and distinguish between different vocal sounds.
Within our provision children enjoy experimenting with sounds as they take on roles and share stories. Adults model and encourage this throughout the day.
Focused activities for this aspect are included every week within the songs and story sessions throughout the day.
Our focused songs in Nursery include key action songs
Aspect 7 – Oral blending and segmenting
We focus on Aspect 6 with children moving to school in the summer term
In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.
To practise oral blending, an adult would say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, an adult could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.
Focused activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot’s mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice – /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.
Early Phonics – Moving beyond Phase 1 – reading and writing
A rich and varied environment will support children’s language and literacy development through Nursery and beyond.
Oral blending and segmenting the sounds in words are an integral part of the later stages of Phase One Phonics – our focus in Nursery in the last term. The main objectives are for children to segment words into their component sounds, and blend the sounds all through a word.
Exploring the sounds in words occurs as opportunities arise throughout the course of the day’s activities, as well as in planned adult-led sessions with groups and individual children. Children’s curiosity in letter shapes and written words is fostered throughout the Nursery and staff help children to make the links between letter sounds and the written letter as they develop interest in reading and recording words.