Phonics

Phonics Session 7: Practising the digraph 'ar'

The focus sound today is 'ar'.

Now watch the alphablocks episode carefully... I bet you can't spot any words with the 'ar' digraph in! If you do spot some, where does the 'ar' sound come? Is it at the start of the word, in the middle of the word or at the end of the word?

Can you think of any words with the ar sound in?

Maybe you could practise writing some of these words in your pink book? Show your grown up how you sound out each word to hear every sound you need to write down. Try it for these words:

dark

hard

March

card

part

farm

park

The challenge is to try to stretch the words 'star' and 'party'. The word 'party' sounds like it has an 'ee' at the end but look, there is a 'y' making the 'ee' sound. There are some sneaky adjacent consonants in 'star' that are difficult to hear so stretch it very slowly!
*When we ask the children to stretch a word, we mean to say it almost in slow motion. This allows them to hear individual sounds much more clearly.*

I wonder if you can read and/or write these sentences below. The word 'called' is a word that is not phonetically decodable but let them try to sound it out anyway and praise them for trying to hear their phonics and giving it a go. You could look at the correct spelling afterwards.

I will go to the farm in my car with my pet shark. He is called Mark.