How do we teach phonics? What is phonics?

In order to make a good start in reading and writing, children need to have an adult listen to them and talk to them. Speaking and listening are the foundations for reading and writing. Daily reading and hearing aspirational books.

Letters and Sounds is a phonics programme that is divided into six phases, with each phase building on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. Children have time to practise and rapidly expand their ability to read and spell words. They are also taught to read and spell ‘tricky words’, which are words with spellings that are unusual. Children move through the phases from nursery to year 2.

Phase One - Nursery Teachers plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys and to sounds in spoken language. Teachers teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs. This helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.

Phase One Activities: “I can see a dog, a d-o-g, a dog.” (segment and blend words from the child’s environment.) Hear sounds in the environment – can you hear the wind? What noise does it make? Can you make a dog noise? A cat noise? How do they sound the same/different? Play with musical instruments and discuss the sounds.

Phase 2 – Reception In this phase children will continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, including ‘sound-talk’. They will also be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /ll/ as in b-e-ll. Children will call this a digraph. At Mountford Manor we use Jolly Phonics.

Phase 2 Activities: Segment and blend sounds for reading and writing – in the child’s environment/shop signs/road signs etc. Use phoneme frames to support the child in segmenting and blending. Use beads/cubes to build words. Practise using homework given by teachers and reading books daily.

Phase 3 – Reception The purpose of this phase is to: teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them read and write words in phrases and sentences.

Phase 3 Activities: Use beads or cubes to combine sounds and make digraphs, build words using these Children play ‘spot the digraph’ on the page of their book. Can they think of other words with this digraph?

Phase 4 – Reception/Year One Children continue to practise previously learned graphemes and phonemes and learn how to read and write: CVCC words: tent, damp, toast, chimp For example, in the word ‘toast’, t = consonant, oa = vowel, s = consonant, t = consonant. and CCVC words: swim, plum, sport, cream, spoon For example, in the word ‘cream’, c = consonant, r = consonant, ee = vowel, m = consonant. They will be learning more tricky words and continuing to read and write sentences together. Tricky words said, so, do, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what

Phase 4 Activities: Focussing on blending and segmenting longer words. Break words down (segment) using sound buttons. Play buried treasure with real and nonsense words. Notice consonant blends such as string

Phase 5 – Year One In Phase 5 children learn the alternative graphemes for sounds they already know. E.g ai can be represented as ay etc. They will learn about split digraphs in this phase – when a sound is represented in the format a-e. Children should be using the terms vowel and consonant.

Phase 5 Activities: Play phase 5 bingo, matching sounds to their alternative sounds e.g. matching ay and ai. Read longer words by breaking them down into syllables. Look at where the sound comes in a word (oi usually in the middle, oy usually at the end).

Phase 6 – Year 1/Year 2 This phase focuses on grammar. Children will learn suffixes and prefixes and also how a word changes when it becomes plural or changes tense. Homophones and apostrophes.

Phase 6 Activities: Look at word prefixes and suffixes, can you make silly words by changing the prefix and suffix (beginning and end)? Play spelling rule bingo (match words that have the gh as f rule for example)

For any phase phoneme frames can be used – show a picture then break it down into its phonemes. Write the graphemes.

Useful websites: (for resources to print)