Phase 5 graphemes - decodable words (green words)

Another set of red herring slides for my Year 1 class! Handy for the Year 1 phonics screening check, Year 2 revision and even end of Year R. The red herrings are a bit random, but the children love looking out for them. The ‘red herrings’ are slides within the powerpoint that don’t contain the featured grapheme, e.g. in a set of words for ‘ea’, a slide will pop up saying ‘shirt’ - a red herring. When they arrive the children put their hands together, make a fishy movement and call out ‘red herring!’ For some reason, they think it’s hysterical and I’m happy to go with it because they are engaged, they’re paying attention to the graphemes and best of all they’re having fun - I love hearing their cheeky giggles!

I also use the slides to teach silent blending, how to break down longer words for reading and spelling patterns we’ve practised, e.g. words ending in ‘ed’ or ‘y’. I’ve really noticed their reading coming along and although it’s not entirely down to the red herring powerpoints as we do lots of stuff, I think they’re a solid part of it. I don’t use them every day because I don’t want the concept to get boring but I always get a ‘yessss!’ when I do.

I’ve checked Letters and Sounds carefully against the National Curriculum and believe that all of the digraphs and trigraphs listed are included (between this set of powerpoints and the Phase 3 set) but if you spot any discrepancies, please get in touch and I’ll update the slides.

I hope your class enjoy using this as much as mine do!