Violet
11/12/23
Phonics Explained
This blog post is for parents, and its aim is to try and explain phonics and how it is taught in schools. Phonics is about making connections between the sounds we speak (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) we use to write them down.
It is a requirement that schools teach systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) and use a validated programme to do so. There are lots of these a school could choose to buy and use, we use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised so obviously lots of the information in this post is relevant to that, however it will also explain some of the basics that all schools will cover in their daily phonics teaching.
Children should be having one phonics lesson in school every day. This starts officially in Reception, continuing into Year One and Year Two but in Reception it is actually the start of Phase 2. Before this they will also take part in phonics activities in Nursery too, building the foundations for the phonics learning that will take place in Phase 1.
Phonics Explained - Terms You Need To Know
Phoneme
A phoneme is a word to describe the unit of sound that a letter makes. For guidance on how to pronounce the phonemes correctly watch the Little Wandle videos on Phase 2, Phase 3 and Phase 5 sounds.
Grapheme
A grapheme is the sound in written form that you would read or write, ie the letter.
GPCs
This stands for Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences.
Diagraph
Two letters that work together to make one sound. It is described to the children as ‘2 letters, 1 sound’.
Trigraph
Three letters that work together to make one sound. It is described to the children as ‘3 letters, 1 sound’.
Split Diagraph
A split diagraph is two letters that work together to make one sound, but it is split between a consonant eg a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e and u_e.
Tricky Words
These are words that don’t follow the rules and that can’t be sounded out, according to the rules they have learnt. Sometimes words are said to be tricky words in one phase, but will become decodable once they have learnt other sounds in another phase. Watch the Little Wandle video How we teach tricky words to see this explaineese
Alien Words
Alien words are made up words using the sounds learnt. This allows children to blend words together, relying on their phonic knowledge without relying on any other word knowledge. This allows them to use and apply what they have learnt. Alien words are therefore part of the Year One Phonics Screening. Watch the Little Wandle video A quick guide to alien words to see this explained.
Sound Talk and Blending
This describes breaking down the word and saying each of the sounds one at a time, eg c-a-t, sh-o-p, k-i-ck. Then the sounds are blended together to make the word, eg cat, shop, kick. Watch the Little Wandle video How we teach blending to see this explained.
Segmenting
Segmenting is breaking down a word into its phonemes/graphemes. Children will be encouraged to segment a word and count how many sounds there are, which helps them focus in on all the sounds in a word and support their reading or writing of that word.
Phonics Explained - Phases And Supporting Your Child At Home
Phonics is split into 6 phases. Phase 1 starts when the children are in Nursery. Phases 2, 3 and 4 are all covered in Reception. Phase 5 is taught in Year One and Phase 6 is taught in Year Two.
From Reception onwards the children’s phonic knowledge will be assessed by the class teacher every half term. It will be checked that they know the phonemes and corresponding graphemes learnt that half term and if they can blend using them. If they struggle to do this extra support will be put in place so they can hopefully catch up and not be left behind.
Nursery
Phase 1
Phase 1 is all about building the foundations so children are ready to learn the phonemes and corresponding graphemes and then blend these together effectively in Phase 2.
Phase 1 starts by children hearing and identifying different sounds in the world around them, for example the noises animals make or the sounds of modes of transport. They then talk about the initial sound of their name and other words, exploring these further by playing alliteration games. The children would also explore words, learning to identify syllables and how to orally sound talk words and blend them together.
They would then start to slowly learn the phonemes, starting with ‘s, a, t, p, i, n’ in the second half of the Autumn term. They would do this orally, not necessarily matching these phonemes to the corresponding graphemes yet. In Spring they would move on to learning the phonemes ‘m, d, g, o, ck, e’ and then ‘u, r, h, b, f, l, j’ . In the Summer Term they would then do ‘v, w, y, z, qu, ch, sh, th, ck, x, ng, nk’
At Home
During Phase 1 you can help your child tune in to the sounds around you, pointing out different sounds and talking about them and asking them questions ‘Did you hear that sound? What did it sound like? I think it was a train.’ Singing songs and reading stories with different sounds in too would help, getting them to join in with the different sounds. There are some Nursery Rhymes on the Little Wandle website you can use with your child.
Talking about their name and the sound it starts with would also be helpful, as well as thinking of other things that start with the same sound, for example Joshua starts with J and so does jelly, jam, jump. You could do this with words too, when getting the bus, you could say here comes the bus, bus starts with ‘b’ or when getting dressed, lets put on your socks, what does the word sock start with? You could also play with alliteration, such as saying do you want a yummy yoghurt or did you see the long lorry?
You can talk about the syllables of familiar words and clap out how many syllables there are in a word together. When they are getting more confident with sounds you could sound talk words to practice oral blending, while playing games or just in everyday conversations, such as saying can you touch your h-ea-d / l-e-g? Can you pick up the c-a-r / tr-u-ck? Lets put your c-oa-t on or please brush your t-ee-th.
Reception
Phase 2 - Autumn Term
Phase 2 is taught at the beginning of Reception. The children learn one phoneme a day, four days a week. On a Friday these sounds are reviewed. The phonemes are the same as taught in Phase 1. They are taught in the same order, but they are taught a lot quicker with them all being taught by the end of the Autumn Term. These phonemes are also matched to the graphemes and the children learn how to write these correctly.
Very quickly the children start to use the phonemes they have learnt to sound talk and blend words together, as well as counting the sounds they can hear segmenting the word. This is demonstrated by the teacher so they can model what to do and then they have a go themselves. In the phonics lesson the children practise reading words containing new and already learnt phonemes and also practise reading a phrase or sentence together. They will all have a go at writing a new grapheme and a word too.
The aim is that the children will know the phonemes and matching graphemes and be able to blend words effectively themselves by Christmas. They can then very quickly read and write words, eg sat, tin, ant, although obviously writing these words will come after being able to read them. Alongside this they also learn tricky words they wouldn’t be able to sound out, identifying why they are tricky.
Phase 3 - Spring Term
Phase 3 begins in January and builds on the rapid progress the children have made in the Autumn Term. The children will now learn vowel diagraphs and trigraphs. Little Wandle has a catchphrase for each of the diagraphs/trigraphs to help the children to remember them.
The children become even more confident blending words together and do so more independently in this phase and it is not as teacher led. They will also start to tackle longer words and are taught to chunk them to make them easier to blend. This means they split a word up, sound talking and blending each part and then putting the whole thing together.
Phase 4 - Summer Term
In the last term of Reception all the learning done in the previous two terms will be reinforced. The children will continue to practise the sounds they have learnt and blend these together in longer words, including adjacent consonants, such as sh-ar-k, t-ee-th, ch-ur-ch and str-o-ng. Words ending in ed, ing, est etc will be used and more tricky words will be learnt. Children will practise using and applying their knowledge more spelling and writing words themselves.
At Home
In Phase 2 and 3 your child will be learning four new phonemes a week. You can support this by being aware of the new sounds they are learning at school and practising at home too. Little Wandle use mnemonics or phrases to help the children remember the phoneme/grapheme and also has a formation phrase, which is to help the children remember how to correctly form the letter when writing it. Knowing these too and supporting your child to practise saying the phoneme and forming the grapheme correctly would greatly support their learning. There are videos and printable sheets about the Phase 2 and 3 sounds and tricky words you can look at on the Little Wandle website.
Continuing to practise orally sound talking and blending simple words together, counting the sounds they can hear using their segmenting fingers and even having a go at writing some of these words would also really help. Make sure you are just using the sounds they have learnt at school already and don’t include phonemes they haven’t done yet.
Reading is so incredibly important too. Once they have words in their book these will be matched to what they have been doing at school and the level of book they bring home will be based on their ability to blend words together using these sounds. Don’t underestimate the importance of sitting and reading a book to your child too, just reading stories to your child will greatly benefit them. You’ll be demonstrating the skills they are learning at school and help them develop of love of reading too.
Play games with the phonemes/graphemes they have learnt, make it fun! Making activities multisensory will help them so much more than if you are always just sitting down making them read or write words out. There are so many ways you could do this, for example, use duplo or chunky beads and write the graphemes on them for them to create words, write the sounds on card and put them on the floor – say a sound and they have to jump on it, use squirty bottles to write the graphemes outside on the ground. There are some suggested games using Little Wandle flashcards on the collins website. You can also play games on the computer, there are online games for all the phases from fabulous websites linked on our English and Phonics Games section of the site. I would also highly recommend Fast Phonics by Reading Eggs.
Year One
Phase 5
In Year One children will first briefly review the sounds and tricky words learnt in Reception and then move on to learn alternative spellings for these sounds, as well as alternative pronunciations, split diagraphs and some new tricky words. An example of the alternative spellings taught are oy (toy) instead of oi (foil) and ay (day) instead of ai (snail). Examples of the alternative pronunciations are, for example, but / put and cow / blow. There are videos and printable sheets about the Year 1 Phase 5 sounds and tricky words you can look at on the Little Wandle website.
During this phase children develop a wider, more detailed knowledge of phonemes and graphemes, understanding different pronunciations and alternative spellings. They will practise blending words (which they may become confident enough in to start doing in their head), reading and writing with these alternatives and hopefully become more confident in tackling unknown words.
Year Two
Phase 6
Phase 6 is taught in Year Two, where the children will continue to practise and become more confident in the skills they have learnt. They will hopefully be becoming fluent readers and becoming more accurate with their spelling.
The children will be able to sight read lots of words without having to blend them first, and when reading a word they are unfamiliar with they will have well practised strategies to be able to decode them, which they can either do in their head or out loud. When spelling they should be becoming more confident in the different spelling patterns learnt, beginning to spell more complex words with some accuracy and learning how to use prefixes and suffixes and rules for adding ing, ed, est, ly etc at the ends of words for example.
At Home
In Year One and Year Two children should be fairly secure in their phonic knowledge and are therefore extending this at school. Just like in previous years being aware of the sounds they are learning and supporting this at home will be very beneficial. Continuing to read with them at home and them using and applying their phonic knowledge in both their reading and writing will help reinforce their learning at school.
Phonics Explained - Year One Screening Check
The Phonics Screening Check happens in June when children are in Year One. The screening check is carried out in a 1:1 situation in a quiet room by the class teacher so your child will be with someone they are comfortable with. By the time they get to the check they will be very familiar with the process and will be used to phonics assessments, which they’ll have been having every half term since Reception.
During the screening check the children will need to sound out and blend graphemes to read one or two syllable words, and made up nonsense words called alien words. There will be 40 words, 20 real words and 20 alien words. The alien words check the children’s decoding skills and knowledge of graphemes in a fair way. The use of alien words allows the teacher to assess what the children would do when they read a word that they have not read before and makes them use their knowledge of letters and sounds to work out how to read them.
If a child does not pass the Phonics Screening Check extra support will be put in place in the following year and they will take the screening check again in June when they are in Year Two with a hope the catch up sessions will have helped and they will then pass. The pass mark is 32 correct answers out of 40 and will be shared with you usually with your child’s end of year report.
You can have a look at the last 5 phonics screening checks so you can see what they look like or practise with your child. There was no screening check in 2020 or 2021 because of covid.
2017 Phonics Screening Check | 2018 Phonics Screening Check | 2019 Phonics Screening Check | 2022 Phonics Screening Check | 2023 Phonics Screening Check
All photos and illustrations in this blog post are Whizzbots and Shutterstock Images.
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