PHONICS PHASES

PHASE 1

- It is mainly oral. 

- It usually starts in Nursery.

- Teachers plan activities that will help children to listen attentively to sounds around them, such as the sounds of their toys and in spoken language. Teachers teach a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs. They read and share good books to and with the children. This helps to increase the number of words the children know – their vocabulary – and helps them to talk confidently about their books.
* 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 e.g. ‘c c c c – car’, b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch – chip’
*Say: ‘a tall tin of tomatoes!’ ‘Tommy, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A lovely little lemon!’. This is called alliteration, when words all begin with the same sound. Try using names of your child and their friends or family members e.g. ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Grandma grabs grapes!’ ‘Ben’s black boots
*Teach them tongue twisters such as ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’
*Play rhyming games, make up silly rhymes together, find the rhyming word in nursery rhymes.

- Oral blending and segmenting. Your child will not be expected to match the letters to sounds at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and create the spoken sounds.
* Find real objects that have three phonemes (sounds) and practice ‘sound talking’. First, just let them listen, then see if they will join in, for example saying:
‘I spy a p-e-g - peg’
‘I spy a c-u-p – cup’
‘Find your s-o-ck – sock’
Simon says – put your hands on your h-ea-d
Simon says – touch your f –ee –t / ch-i-n etc.

PHASE 2

- In this phase, children continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, especially sound talking. They will also be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes) using Jolly Phonics actions and songs. They will be taught which sound (phoneme) is represented by which grapheme and that 2 letters can make one sound (phoneme) e.g. /ll/ as in bell, /ck/ as in sock.

- Children will be taught how to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) correctly to make blending easier. Sounds should be sustained (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible ‘uh’ sounds after consonant should be reduced to avoid saying e.g. buh, cuh. 
Teachers help children to look at different letters and say the right sounds for them.

- VC and CVC words
C and V are abbreviations for ‘consonant’ and ‘vowel’. VC words are words consisting of a vowel then a consonant (e.g. am, it, at) and CVC words are words consisting of a consonant then a vowel then a consonant ( e.g. cat, rug, sun). Words such as tick and bell also count as CVC words; although they have four letters they only have three sounds. For example, in the word bell, b = consonant, e = vowel, ll = consonant.
Now the children will be seeing letters and words, as well as hearing them. They will be shown how to make whole words by pushing magnetic, plastic or wooden letters together to form little words, reading little words on the interactive whiteboard and breaking up words into individual sounds which will help with their writing and spelling. These will be simple words made up of two phonemes e.g. am, it, on, or three phonemes, e.g. cat, rug, sun, tick, bell. Model this for them if they find it tricky.

Breaking words up: Do it the other way around: read the word, break it up and move the letters away saying e.g. ‘met – m-e-t’
Both these activities help children to see the links between reading and spelling.

PHASE 3

The purpose of this phase is to:
- Teach more phonemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example ‘oa’ as in boat. Again we use Jolly Phonics for catchy songs and actions to match many of these longer vowel sounds!
- Practise blending and segmenting a wider set of cvc words made of two or more letters, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light, tail, week, food, park, soil, burn, town
- Learn all letter names (* at least vowel names) and begin to form them correctly when writing.
- Read and write words in phrases and sentences
- Begin to make longer words from smaller words that they can already read and write e.g. laptop, sandpit, pondweed,
- Ways to support children:
* Play I Spy – using letter names as well as sounds
* Sing an alphabet song together
* Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some of the two grapheme (letter) combinations: r-ai-n = rain blending for reading; rain = r-ai-n segmenting for writing b-oa-t = boat blending for reading; boat = b-oa-t segmenting for writing h-ur-t = hurt blending for reading; hurt = h-ur-t segmenting for writing
* Play against the clock – set a timer and say a word, get children to either write or find magnetic letters to make the word. See how many they can do and then try to beat it!


Praise children for trying out words & don’t worry if they make mistakes. This is an important part of the learning process.

PHASE 4

- Children continue to practise previously learned graphemes and phonemes and learn how to read and write:
* CVCC words: e.g. tent, damp, toast, chimp
For example, in the word ‘toast’ – t = consonant, oa = vowel, s = consonant, t = consonant
* CCVC words: e.g. swim, plum, sport, cream, spoon
For example, in the word ‘cream’, c = consonant, r = consonant, ea = vowel, m = consonant

They will use their skills with increasing confidence to read and write even more words, phrases and sentences using their phonic skills, including longer words that they can use their phonic skills to work out, for example: teapot, rainbow, starlight, treetop.

- Ways you can support children:
* Practise reading and writing some CCVC and CVCC words but continue to play around with CVC words. Children like reading and spelling words that they have previously worked with as this helps them to feel successful.
* Make up captions and phrases for the students to read and write linked to a real purpose e.g. clean the pond, put the bins out, clean out the pets. Write some simple messages in sentences for your students to find around the class and read. Give them a treat if they find and read all of them! Make it into a simple treasure hunt.
Words are everywhere so look out for words in the environment, such as food packaging, that children will find easy to read e.g. fish and chips, fresh milk, jam, cat food.
- Encourage children to work on reading words, for example, a street name such as Liverpool Road, captions on buses and lorries, street signs such as bus stop, door signs such as push, pull

PHASE 5 and 6

- They will learn that most sounds (phonemes) can be spelled in more than one way for example the f sound can be written as f as in fan or ff as in huff or ph as in photo.
They will revisit some of the ways of making vowel sounds using more than one letter (digraphs) and learn other ways of writing these phonemes. For example the /i/ sound can made by igh as in light, ie as in tie, i as in kind, y as in fly and split digraph i-e as in kite (something you will probably remember as ‘magic e!)

This work all develops children’s knowledge of spelling choices. 

- They will learn that most letters and combinations of letters (graphemes) can represent more than one sound. For example, the grapheme ea can be read as /ee/ as in leaf or /e/ as in bread. This supports children’s reading development in particular.
Good phonics knowledge and skills help your child to read words fluently and to write words with increasingly accurate spellings, but they need to understand what they are reading and the processes and purposes for writing too. Your help with these processes is just as vital.