St Andrew’s CE
Primary School
Letters and Sounds
How we learn
“phonics”
11th September 2012
Mrs D Leck
Enunciation
• Phoneme – smallest unit of sound in a
word.
• Grapheme – a letter or sequence of
letters that represents a phoneme.
• Sounds/phonemes are represented by
letters
• A phoneme can be represented by one or
more letters e.g. Sh, th, ee, etc
• The same phoneme can be represented/
spelled in more than one way e.g. rain,
may, lake
• The same spelling may represent more
than one sound e.g. mean, deaf
Phase 1
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Exploring with sounds and words.
Recognise words that rhyme.
Provide a string of rhyming words.
Begin to show an interest in blending
and segmenting.
Phase 1
• Ways you can support your children at home
• Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects
in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first
sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for
example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.
• Say: ‘A tall tin of tomatoes!’ ‘Tommy, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A
lovely little lemon!’ This is called alliteration. Use names, for
example, ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Milo makes music’,
‘Naheema’s nose’.
• Teach them ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’.
• Enjoy rhyming books.
• Play with rhyming strings.
Phase 2
• Give the sound when shown any phase 2 letter (securing the
first starter letters) s,a,t,p,i,n,o,
• Can find a phase 2 letter on in the room, newspaper, book.
• Be able to orally blend and segment cvc words.
• Be able to blend and segment to read and spell using
magnetic letters VC words such as: if,am,on, up,
• Be able to read 5 tricky words.
• Write each letter correctly when following a model.
Phase 2 sets of sounds
• Sounds are introduced in sets
Set 1: s a t p
Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k
Set 4: ck e u r
Set 5: h b f ff l ll ss
Using Phonics to support
reading
• Using Phonics to support reading
• Can you sound these letters together
• (eg paddle p-a-d = pad) Robot speak!
• Are there any parts/chunks of the word you can
• read? (eg fan-tas-tic)
• What sound do these letters together make?
• (eg sh igh ph)
• Does it look right, does it match the letter sounds in
the word?
• ALWAYS USE PHONIC CUES ALONGSIDE CONTEXT OR
• GRAMMATICAL CUES
Phase 2
• Ways you can support your children at home
• Magnetic letters
• Buy magnetic letters for your fridge, or for use with a tin tray. Find out
which letters have been taught – have fun finding these with your child and
place them on the magnetic surface.
• Making little words together
• Make little words together, for example, it, up, am, and, top, dig, run, met,
pick. As you select the letters, say them aloud: ‘a-m – am’, ‘m-e-t – met’.
• Breaking words up
• Now do it the other way around: read the word, break the word up and
move the letters away, saying: ‘met – m-e-t’.
• Both these activities help children to see that reading and spelling are
reversible processes.
• Don’t forget the writing box!
• Spelling is harder than reading words – praise, don’t criticise. Little
whiteboards and pens, and magic boards, are a good way for children to try
out spellings and practise their handwriting.
Phase 3
• Give the sound when shown all or most phase 2 and 3
graphemes (inc: ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo)
• Finds the graphemes from a display when given a sound.
• Be able to blend and read cvc words (ie single syllable words
consisting of phase 2 and 3 graphemes).
• Be able to segment and make a phonetically plausible
attempt at spelling harder words using graphemes from
phase 2 and 3.
• Read another 12 tricky words.
• Be able to spell tricky words: the, to, I no, go
• To know the alphabet song when pointing to the letters.
Phase 3
Letter progression and graphemes
continued
Set 6: j v w x
Set 7: y z zz qu
Set 8: ch sh th ng
Teach: ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi
ear air ure er
Phase 3
• Ways you can support your children at home
• Sing an alphabet song together.
• Play ‘I spy’, using letter names as well as sounds.
• Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some of the
two grapheme (letter) combinations:
• Praise your child for trying out words.
• Ask teachers for a list of the tricky words.
• Set a timer. Call out one word at a time and get your child
to spell it on a magic board or a small whiteboard, against
the timer – remember, they can use magnetic letters.
• Play ‘Pairs’, turning over two words at a time trying to find
a matching pair. This is especially helpful with the tricky
words: the the, to to, no no, go go, I I
• Don’t worry if they get some wrong! These are hard to
remember – they need plenty of practise.
Phase 4
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Give the sound when shown all or most phase 2 and 3 graphemes
(inc: ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo)
Finds the graphemes from a display when given a sound.
Be able to blend and read words containing adjacent consonants.
For example, in the word ‘toast’, t = consonant, oa = vowel, s
= consonant, t = consonant.and CCVC words: swim, plum, sport,
cream, spoon
Be able to segment and spell words containing adjacent consonants.
Be able to read another 14 key words.
Be able to spell up to 20 key words.
Write each letter, usually correctly.
Phase 4
• Ways you can support your children at home
• Practise reading and spelling some CVCC and CCVC words but
continue to play around with CVC words. Children like reading and
spelling words that they have previously worked with, as this
makes them feel successful.
• Make up captions and phrases for your child to read and write, for
example, a silver star, clear the pond, crunch crisps. Write some
simple sentences and leave them around the house for your child
to find and read.
• Look out for words in the environment, such as on food packaging,
• Work on reading words together, for example, a street name such
as Park Road, captions on buses and lorries, street signs such as
bus stop.
Phase 5
• Give the sound to any grapheme that has been taught.
• For any given sound, write the common grapheme.
• Magic a_e: made,cake, e_e: Pete, gene, Steve, i_e, o_e and
u_e
• Apply phonic knowledge and skills as the prime appraoch to
reading and spelling unfamiliar words that are not
completely decodable.
• Read and spell decodable words.
• Read automatically all the 100 high frequency words.
• Spell most of the 100 HFWs
• Form each letter correctly.
Phase 5 activities:
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Sentence substitution:
The girl came home on the train.
bird
bus
went
boy
Phase 5
Further Teaching of Graphemes:
ay – day oy – boy wh – when a-e make
ou – out ir – girl ph – photo e-e these
ie – tie ue – blue ew – new i-e like
ea – eat aw – saw oe- toe o-e home
Au – Paul u-e rule
Phase 6
READING:
• Longer and less familiar texts.
• Greater familiarity with graphemes.
• Increased number of words which can be read automatically.
• Greater emphasis on developing a range of comprehension
strategies.
SPELLING:
• Continue to segment words into phonemes but developing accuracy
through making informed choices of graphemes where there are
alternatives.
• Learn conventions for adding common suffixes eg - ed.
• Develop strategies for independent spelling and proof reading.
Phonics Screening
In June we are required to complete a phonics
screening check of the children in year 1. They
children have to read 40 words that are made up of
20 non-words and 20 real words.
The purpose of this test is to see how well the
children can decode words in order for them to read
them.
It is expected that we aim for the children to reach
phase 5 sounds by the end of year 1. This skill is
imperative to aid the children to read and write in
future years.
 Year 1 screening video