Phonics

In EYFS we follow letters and sounds and the children continue this into Key Stage 1.

We group the children depending on their stage of development. Nursery children usually begin with Phase 1 and access elements of Phase 2 thoughout the year, when appropriate. Please see below for details of these phases.

Reception children usually begin with Phase 2 with a stong focus on blending the sounds together in order to hear and say the word. Children who have been able to recall Phase 2 sounds move swiftly onto Phase 3. 

The aim is for ALL reception children to have finished Phase 4 by the end of the Reception year and be confident at reading banded reading books linked to their phonic knowledge. 

If we think that a child might not be able to finish Phase 4, we respond rapidly with intervention and additional sessions so that they are Year 1 ready. 

Some reception children will have begun to learn Phase 5 sounds and will be reading books matched to their phonic knowledge. 

Please ensure that you are reading with your child as often as possible. A few minutes a day is ideal. They need to read their banded reading book but it is equally as important to share books about their interests, books written in their home language and non-fiction books about topics they enjoy. 

Phonics - Phase One

 

Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects. Each aspect contains three strands: tuning in to sounds, listening and remembering sounds and talking about sounds.

 

It is intended that each of the first six aspects should be dipped into, rather than going through them in any order, with a balance of activities. Aspect 7 will usually come later, when children have had plenty of opportunity to develop their sound discrimination skills.

 

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. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

 

Aspect 2 - General sound discrimination - instrumental sounds

This aspect aims to develop children's awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a 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. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

 

Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme

This aspect aims to develop children's appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, 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.

 

Aspect 6 - Voice sounds

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. 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.

 

Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could 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, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

Reception

Phonics - Phase Two

 

In Phase 2, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time. This phase covers 19 different grapheme- phoneme correspondences (GPCs).

 

Phoneme means the smallest unit of sound. There are 44 phonemes in English. Phonemes can be put together to make words.

 

Grapheme means the way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. tch or 4 letters e.g ough.

Knowing a GPC, means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa.

A set of sounds is taught each week, in the following sequence:

 

Set 1

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

Set 5

 

s, a, t, p

i, n, m, d

g, o, c, k

ck, e, u, r

h b f, ff, l, ll, ss

 

As soon as each set of letters is introduced, children will be encouraged to use their knowledge of the letter sounds to blend and sound out words. For example, they will learn to blend the sounds s-a-t to make the word sat. They will also start learning to segment words. For example, they might be asked to find the letter sounds that make the word tap from a small selection of magnetic letters.

 

Blending- This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading.

 

Oral Segmenting - This is the act of hearing a whole word and then splitting it up into the phonemes that make it. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to segment words to spell them.

 

Segmenting - This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling.

Blending and segmenting are taught as reversible processes.

 

Phase 2 Set 1 Letters and Words

In Set 1, the first four sounds are introduced and seven words can be used for segmenting and blending:

s, a, t, p    - at, a, sat, pat, tap, sap, as

 

Phase 2 Set 2 Letters and Words

Set 2 includes four new sounds. As each new sound is learnt, children will be able to sound out several new words, as follows:

i - it, is, sit, sat, pit, tip, pip, sip

n - an, in, nip, pan, pin, tin, tan, nap

m - am, man, mam, mat, map, Pam, Tim, Sam

d - dad, and, sad, dim, dip, din, did, Sid

 

Phase 2 Set 3 Letters and Words

Set 3 introduces four new sounds, with 28 new decodable words suggested, including five high frequency words, shown in italics below:

g - tag, gag, gig, gap, nag, sag, gas, pig, dig

o - got, on, not, pot, top, dog, pop, God, Mog

c - can, cot, cop, cap, cat, cod

k - kid, kit, Kim, Ken

high frequency words: the, to, I, go, no

 

Phase 2 Set 4 Letters and Words

Set 4 introduces four new graphemes, with 36 new decodable words suggested. For the first time, some of the suggested words contain two syllables, such as pocket, sunset etc.

ck - kick, sock, sack, dock, pick, sick, pack, ticket, pocket

e - get, pet, ten, net, pen, peg, met, men, neck

u - up, mum, run, mug, cup, sun, tuck, mud, sunset

r - rim, rip, ram, rat, rag, rug, rot, rocket, carrot

 

Phase 2 Set 5 Letters and Words

Set 5 introduces seven graphemes (three of which are doubled letters), with 69 new decodable words suggested.

h - had, him, his, hot, hut, hop, hum, hit, hat, has, hack, hug

b - but, big, back, bet, bad, bag, bed, bud, beg, bug, bun, bus, Ben, bat, bit, bucket, beckon, rabbit

f, ff - of, if, off, fit, fin, fun, fig, fog, puff, huff, cuff, fan, fat

l, ll - lap, let, leg, lot, lit, bell, fill, doll, tell, sell, Bill, Nell, dull, laptop

ss - ass, less, hiss, mass, mess, boss, fuss, hiss, pass, kiss, Tess, fusspot

This Phase also introduces 'tricky words' - these are high frequency words which are not easily decodeable - the, to, I, no, go, into. 

 

The typical duration of this phase is 6 weeks.  Assessments are carried out at the end of week 3 and then again at the end of week 6 in order to ascertain whether the children are ready to move onto phase 3 or whether they need to repeat phase 2.

 

Some children in Reception are already onto Phase 3:

 

By the time they reach Phase 3, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 sounds taught in Phase 2.

Over the twelve weeks which Phase 3 is expected to last, twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a time), most of which consist of 2 letters. The children will now know one representation of each of 44 phonemes.  Knowing these new sounds will help them to spell two syllable words.

 

Phoneme means the smallest unit of sound. There are 44 phonemes in English. Phonemes can be put together to make words.

 

Grapheme means the way of writing down a phoneme. Graphemes can be made up from 1 letter e.g. p, 2 letters e.g. sh, 3 letters e.g. tch or 4 letters e.g ough.

 

Knowing a GPC (grapheme-phoneme correspondence), means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa.

 

Set 6: j v w x

Set 7: y z, zz qu

Consonant digraphs- ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel diagraphs- ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

 

Digraph means a grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).

 

Trigraph means a grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).

 

Graphemes	Sample words	Graphemes	Sample words
ch	chip	ar	farm
sh	shop	or	for
th	thin/then	ur	for
ng	ring	ow	cow
ai	rain	oi	coin
ee	feet	ear	dear
igh	night	air	fair
oa	boat	ure	sure
oo	boot/look	er	corner

 

Children will continue to develop blending and segmenting skills throughout Phase 3.

Blending- This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading.

 

Oral Segmenting - This is the act of hearing a whole word and then splitting it up into the phonemes that make it. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to segment words to spell them.

 

Segmenting - This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling.

 

During Phase 3, the following tricky words (which can't yet be decoded) are introduced:

he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my, her

 

 

To find out more, or get some ideas to play at home, please follow this link:

 

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/