Make choices about how to read graphemes with alternative possible pronunciations.

Phonics Learning Opportunities

To know common alternative pronunciations for graphemes.

To practise reading words and deciding which pronunciation of a grapheme makes most sense.

Organisation

Whole class, small group, 1:1.

Once children are familiar with this game they could play independently.

Teaching ideas

A menu will allow you to choose which grapheme to investigate.

The main game screen will show a number of trees with words on them (the number of trees will depend on the number of pronunciations for that grapheme). Model sound talking each word. Discuss the fact that the particular grapheme is pronounced differently in each word. Ensure the children are confident with each of these pronunciations. Try pointing to each tree while children say the relevant pronunciation of the grapheme. Gradually speed up and see how quickly you can go.

Click on the Get Acorn button. An acorn will appear in the centre of the screen showing a new word containing the same grapheme. Model sound talking this word and trying blending the phonemes together. Experiment with using the different pronunciations of the grapheme. Talk through your thought processes in deciding which is the correct pronunciation to use to make this word make sense. Tell the children that you need to drag this word to the tree that shows the same pronunciation of the grapheme. Point to each tree in turn and ask the children to give a thumbs up or thumbs down. Drag the acorn to the tree that most children chose.

For subsequent words, ask the children to sound talk, blend the words and decide which pronunciation is appropriate for this word. It works quite well to ask individual children to do this and then get the whole class to repeat the sound talking and the blended word. If the initial child struggles to blend the word and choose the appropriate grapheme, ask other members of the class if they can help out.

Again, ask children to show with thumbs up or thumbs down which tree the acorn should be dragged to.

Extensions

Please remember these are just ideas. You know your children best and can adapt this game in any way you like to help them learn to blend. Letters and Sounds has instructions for a small group, hands on version of this game (see p136).

NB. It is important to explore with the children words that make sense with more than one pronunciation (e.g. wind). Teach them that in this case they need to think about context by reading the rest of the sentence it is in.