Glossary of terms
Decoding: Interpreting the symbols on paper which represent soundsReading!
Encoding: Using symbols as marks on paper to communicate what we want
to say- Writing!
Phonemes: Basic sounds from which speech is composed
For example, ‘sprout’ can be separated into five
Phonemes- s/p/r/ou/t
There are about 44 phonemes in common use in speaking
English
Graphemes: These are the written codes for the basic sounds
Graphemes can be one or more letters but they represent
one phoneme, ‘ie’ can be represented by
Y (my)
i-e (time)
ie (pie)
igh (sigh)
Blending: Saying sounds smoothly together to hear a word- Reading.
Segmenting: Saying a word and hearing individual sounds- Spelling.
Tricky words: sets of high frequency words to build a child’s vocabulary.
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Phonics in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1
The school’s phonics programme is based on ‘Letters and Sounds’
(resources from the Department for Education and Skills) and Jolly
Phonics. These resources provide a structured scheme to support
teachers and teaching assistants in delivering high quality synthetic
phonics across Foundation Stage, Key Stage One and early Key Stage
Two.
Letters and Sounds Phases 1-6:
Letters and Sounds is built around 6 phases, enabling children to progress
at an individual level. Letters and Sounds should be taught daily for
approximately fifteen minute pure phonics teaching time. Children
entering pre-school and Nursery should begin working within Phase One.
Teachers and Teaching assistants should carry out regular assessments
to ensure children are making progress and set challenging targets
throughout the programme. Phases 1-6 are progressive and children
should move through the phases at an appropriate pace.
 Children entering F.1 (Nursery) will work within Phase One. Phase One
falls largely within the Communication, Language and Literacy area of
learning in the Early Years Foundation stage. In particular it will support
linking sounds and letters in the order in which they occur in words, and
naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet.
 The activities in Phase One are mainly adult-led with the intention of
teaching young children important basic elements of the Letters and
Sounds programme such as oral segmenting and blending familiar words.

Phase One activities are arranged under the following seven aspects:
Aspect 1:
Aspect 2:
Aspect 3:
Aspect 4:
Aspect 5:
Aspect 6:
Aspect 7:
General sound discrimination- environmental sounds
General sound discrimination- Instrumental sounds
General sound discrimination- body percussion
Rhythm and rhyme
Alliteration
Voice sounds
Oral blending and segmenting
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

Each aspect is divided into three strands
Tuning into sounds (auditory discrimination)
Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and
sequencing)
Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language
comprehension)
Activities within the seven aspects are designed to help children:
Listen attentively
Enlarge their vocabulary
Speak confidently to adults and other children
Discriminate phonemes
Reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear, in order, all through
the word.
Use sound-talk to segment words into phonemes.
Children entering F.2 will have experienced a wealth of listening
activities, including songs, stories and rhymes. They will be able to
distinguish between speech sounds and many will be able to blend and
segment words orally. Every child entering F.2 will progress to Phase 2.
The purpose of Phase Two is to:
 Teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and
segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters.
 Enable children to read VC (Vowel/ Consonant) words and CVC
(Consonant/ Vowel/ Consonant) words.

Read high frequency ‘tricky’ words

Recognise and say the sounds of the following letters
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
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Phase Three
Children entering Phase Three will know around 19 letters and be able to
blend phonemes to read VC and segment VC words to spell.
The purpose of Phase Three:
 To teach another 25 graphemes, most comprising two letters (oa) so
children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme.

Children will continue to practise CVC blending and segmenting.

Children will learn letter names throughout this phase.

Children will learn the following sounds
Set 6: j v w x
Set 7: y z zz qu

Children will learn 25 graphemes
sh
ch
th
ng
etc
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Phase Four
Children entering Phase Four will be able to represent each of 42
phonemes by a grapheme and be able to blend and read CVC words and
segment for spelling.
The purpose of Phase Four:
 To consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and
spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.
 To teach CVCC and CCVC words.
Phase Five
Children entering Phase Five are able to read and spell words containing
adjacent consonants and some polysyllabic words.
The purpose of Phase Five:
 Children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for
use in reading and spelling.
Phase Six
Children should know most of the common grapheme- phoneme
correspondences. They should be able to read hundreds of words, doing
this in three ways:
 Reading the words automatically if they are very familiar;
 Decoding them quickly and silently because their sounding and blending
routine is now well established.
 Decoding them aloud.
 Introduce past tense
 Adding suffixes
 Supporting the application of spelling in children’s own writing.
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The School’s phonics programme aims to:
 Show pupils that the words we say can be broken up into identifiable
individual sounds
 Demonstrate that writing is a code, and that we can write down the
sounds that we hear.
In the Foundation Stage and Key Stage One:

Listening is very important
 A range of learning styles are acknowledged through multi sensory
strategies:
Hearing the sound
Saying the sound
Making the sound through actions
Writing letters
Reading
Throughout Phases 1-3 the main focus of each lesson is to help pupils
identify and count the number of sounds in each word and then write
down these sounds in order. Phases 3-6 build on children’s knowledge and
focus on graphemes.
Lessons also focus on letter formation and handwriting
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Skill Development
Sequencing
Pupils are given lots of practice in identifying first, last and middle
sounds from a sequence of sounds before phonemes are introduced. For
example, various combinations of claps, whistles, hoots.
When sequencing skills have been acquired, pupils move onto identifying
phonemes, reproducing them and encoding them as their commonest
graphemes.
Segmenting
Pupils are given extensive practice in breaking words up into their
phonemes. For example ‘cat’ is segmented c / a / t
Blending
Blending is running phonemes back together to form words.
Segmenting and blending are both essential skills in reading and writing
text.
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Appendix
s
a
t
i
p
n
ck
e
h
r
m
d
g
o
u
l
f
b
ai
j
oa
ie
ee
or
z
w
ng
v
Jolly Phonics Actions
Weave hand in a s shape like a snake, and say ssssss
Wiggle fingers above elbow as if ants crawling on you, say aaa
Turn head from side to side as if watching tennis and say t,t,t
Pretend to be a mouse by wriggling fingers at end of nose and
squeak i,i,i
Pretend to puff out candles saying p,p,p
Make a noise, as if you are a plane- hold out arms and say nnnn
Raise hands and snap fingers as if playing castanets ck,ck,ck
Pretend to tap an egg on the side of a pan and crack it saying
eh,eh,eh
Hold hands in front of mouth panting as if you are out of
breath and say h,h,h
Pretend to be a puppy holding a piece of rag, shaking head from
side to say saying rrrrr
Rub tummy as if seeing tasty food and say mmmmm
Beat hands up and down as if playing a drum and say d,d,d
Spiral hand down, as if water is going down a drain and say g,g,g
Pretend to turn light switch on and off and say o,o,o,o
Pretend to be putting up an umbrella and say u,u,u
Pretend to lick a lollipop and say l l l l
Let hands gently come together as if toy fish deflating and say
ffff
Pretend to hit a ball with a bat and say b b b
Cup hand over ear and say ai,ai,ai
Pretend to wobble like a bowl of jelly
Bring hand to mouth as if you have done something wrong and
say oh!
Stand to attention and salute ie ie
Put hands on head as if ears on a donkey and say eeyore,
eeyore
Put arms out at sides and pretend to be a bee, saying zzzzz
Blow on to open hand, as if you are the wind, saying wh, wh, wh
Imagine you are a weightlifter, and pretend to lift a heavy
weight above your head and say ng,ng
Pretend to be holding the steering wheel of a van and say vvv
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oo
oo
y
x
ch
sh
th
th
qu
ou
oi
ue
er
ar
Move head back and forth as if it is a cuckoo in a clock
Pretend to be eating a yogurt and say y,y,y
Pretend to take x ray of someone with an x ray gun and say ks
ks
Move arms at sides as if you are a train and say ch, ch, ch
Place index finger over lips and say sh sh sh
Pretend to be naughty clowns and stick tongue out a little for
th sound
Stick tongue out further for thumb
Make a duck’s beak with your hands and say qu qu qu
Pretend your finger is a needle and prick thumb saying ou ou ou
Cup hands around mouth and shout to another boat saying oi!
Point to people around you and say you, you, you
Roll hands over each other like a mixer and say erererer
Open mouth wide and say ah
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Appendix
Phoneme
i
a
e
u
o
oo
ooh
ar
or
ee
ue
er
ay
ie
oy
ou
oa
air
p
t
c
b
d
g
f
th
tthh
s
sh
h
v
z
zh
m
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English Phonemes
Example Words
Pig, myth
Cat
Peg, bread, said, friend, any
But, touch, some, blood, won
Log, want
Look, put, would
Moon, flew, do, blue, rule, you, fruit, two
Park, rather, calm, heart
Port, claw, more, door, roar, caught, call, walk, water
Deep, happy, me, meat, chief, money, these
Tune, cue, pupil, pew, view
Kerb, shirt, fur, learn, were word
Day, pain, fame, steak, they, eight
I, kite, pie, wild, night, buy, fly, bye, guide
Toy, soil
House, cow
Boat, go, grow, note, toe, most, though, sew
Hair, there, square, bear, their
Apple, pet
Tin, kittens, debt, pterodactyl, looked
Cup, kite, duck, Christmas
Bat, rabbit
Dog, sudden, filled
Gap, digger, ghost
Fish, stuff, phone, tough
Thing
That
Sun, miss, centre, circle, voice, science
Ship, sugar, machine, station, special
Hit, whole
Van, give
Zebra, easy, is, dogs, xylophone, drizzle
Treasure, vision
Man, summer, comb, autumn
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n
ng
ch
j
r
l
w
y
cs*
cw*
Nut, dinner, knee, gnat, pneumonia
Long
Church, match
Jug, giant, gentle, bridge
Rat, carry, write, rhino
Lip, full, cradle
Wonder, when
Yes
Fax
Quick
*These are really two phonemes but are dealt with together in this
programme as they are represented by a single grapheme.
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Appendix
ICT links
www.sparklebox.co.uk - (useful resources- free download)
www.educationcity.com
www.bbc.co.uk
www.espresso.com
www.tes.co.uk – (useful website to download resources- lotto games etc)
RESPONSIBLE
PERSON
KD
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LAST
REVIEWED
MAY 12
NEXT REVIEW
DATE
MAY 13
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