Progression: an overview of the phases and pace of the

programme

Letters and Sounds:a six-phase teaching programme

Progression through the phases

Phase 1

• Speaking and listening skills

• Phonological awareness

• Oral blending and segmenting

Phases 2 - 6

• High quality phonic work to develop fluent word reading skills and good foundations for spelling

The seven aspects of Phase 1• Aspect 1: General sound discrimination - environmental

sounds

• Aspect 2: General sound discrimination - instrumental sounds

• Aspect 3: General sound discrimination - body percussion

• Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme

• Aspect 5: Alliteration

• Aspect 6: Voice sounds

• Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting

Overview of phonic knowledge and skills covered in Phases 2 to 6

• Knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences

• Skills of blending and segmenting with letters

• High-frequency words containing grapheme-phoneme correspondences not yet taught

Phase 2 (up to 6 weeks)The purpose of this phase is to teach at least 19 letters, and move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters.

• Read and spell some VC and CVC words

• Be introduced to reading two-syllable words and simple captions

• Learn to read some high-frequency ‘tricky’ wordsNB It must always be remembered that phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words – decodable and tricky – is the ultimate goal.

High-frequency words

Decodable words

Children should be given lots of practice with sounding and blending decodable high-frequency words so that they will be able to read them ‘automatically’ as soon as possible.

Tricky words

They also need practice reading tricky words, paying attention to any known letter-sound correspondences.

Phase 3 (up to 12 weeks)The purpose of this phase is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a grapheme.

• Continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation

• Apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions

• Learn to read some more tricky words and also begin to learn to spell some of these words

Phase 4 (4 to 6 weeks)

The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.

Phase 5 (throughout Year 1)The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling.

• Learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know.

• Become quicker at recognising graphemes of more than one letter in words and at blending the phonemes they represent.

• When spelling words they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.

Minimum trajectory to secure Phase 5 by end of Year 1

Reception

Autumn 1 Autumn 2 Spring 1 Spring 2 Summer 1 Summer 2

Phase 2 (up to 6 weeks)Revision of Phase 1

Phase 3 (up to 12 weeks) Phase 4 (4 to 6 weeks)

Year 1

Autumn 1 Autumn 2 Spring 1 Spring 2 Summer 1

Summer 2

Phase 5 (up to 30 weeks)

Weeks 1 to 4Teach new graphemes for readingWeeks 5 to 7Teach alternative pronunciations of graphemes for reading

Consolidate previous learning

Teach alternative spellings of phonemes for spelling

Making secure judgements about ‘secure at Phase 2 to 5’Which graphemes do children need to be able to read to be secure at Phase 5?

• Children should be able to give the sound for the graphemes on page 134 of Letters and Sounds and the alternative pronunciations on page 136.

Do children have to spell correctly to be secure at Phase 5?

• Children’s spelling should be phonemically plausible by the end of Phase 5, for example, ‘a noyzy trane at the stayshun’ for ‘a noisy train at the station’. Some unconventional spellings are to be expected while children are learning the correct spellings for an ever-increasing number of common words.

Phase 6 (throughout Year 2 and beyond)By the beginning of Phase Six, children should

• know most of the common GPCs

• be able to read hundreds of words:• 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

Children’s spelling should be phonemically accurate, although it may still be a little unconventional at times. Spelling usually lags behind reading, as it is harder.

During this phase, children become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.

Letter and Sounds Phase Sixvs.

statutory requirements of the NC Y2 programme of study