Phonics

Phase 1

Phase 1 develops children’s abilities to listen to, make, explore and talk about sounds. Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.

Phase 2

Phase 2 develops children’s understanding of the 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. They learn to blend sounds together to make words. They will also segment words into their separate sounds and begin to read simple captions. Children also learn how to form the letters that make the phoneme in many practical ways.

Phonemes- s a t p I n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f ff l ll s ss

Phase 3

Phase 3 develops children’s understanding of new phonemes. By the end of Phase 3 the children will know one way of writing down each of the 44 phonemes.

Phonemes - j v w x y z zz qu

Consonant digraphs - ch sh th ng

Vowel digraphs (and trigraphs) ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er

Phase 4

Phase 4 develops children’s understanding of adjacent consonants and consolidates all the phonemes they have learnt from the previous phases. No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump.

Phase 5

Phase 5 introduces some new phonemes in the same way as in previous phases.

Split digraphs. a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e

Phase 5 introduces the idea that some graphemes can be pronounced in more than one way. This is a vital lesson for children to learn and they need to learn to apply it in their reading.

In Phase 5 the children learn that some phonemes have more than one spelling It is important that children try to discover these rules by themselves by playing investigative type games and looking for patterns.

Phonemes- ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, ey,

Phase 6

Phase 6 reinforces much of the learning from Phase 5, helps children to develop greater automaticity in reading, and begins to explore spelling rules and conventions, including how to write in the past and present tense. They learn about how to change words from the singular to the plural and how to identify the correct use of homophones. They also learn how to contract words.

Suffixes- ing, ed, ful, ness, less, er, est, ly, en, y, ment

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound. There are approximately 44 phonemes in English (it depends on different accents). Phonemes can be put together to make words.

Grapheme

A 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.

GPC

This is short for Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa.

Digraph

A grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).

Trigraph

A grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).

Oral blending

This involves hearing phonemes and being able to merge them together to make a word. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to blend written words.

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 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.

Adjacent consonants

 Adjacent consonants are two or more consonants that appear next to one another within a word and they represent a different sound. e.g. stop - the 'st' are adjacent consonants because they appear next to each other and but also they spell two different sounds. /s/ and /t/