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Letters and Sounds

Table of Contents

Principles

High-quality phonics

Phonics, reading and comprehension

Progression, pace and flexibility

The simple view of reading

Teaching approaches

Teaching phonemes (sounds)

Teaching letters

Supporting children’s approaches

Systematic phonics

Phase summary

Phase one foundations

Letters and Sounds: Overview

High-frequency words

Making assessments

Teaching materials

Grapheme and phoneme tables

Terminology

Teaching and Learning Resources p.1tlr.nationalstrategies.dcsf.gov.uk

© Crown copyright 2011

Find out about Letters and Sounds, which is designed to help you teach children howthe alphabet works for reading and spelling by:

• fostering children’s speaking and listening skills as valuable in their ownright and as preparatory to learning phonic knowledge and skills• teaching high-quality phonic work.

PrinciplesFind out about the principles of teaching phonics in Letters and Sounds. This sectionfocuses on high-quality phonics, reading comprehension and progression, pace andflexibility.

High-quality phonicsLetters and Sounds was created to match specific criteria to support developmentduring Early Years and primary education, and to offer further choice for your schoolor setting. Read about the principles of this high-quality systematic synthetic phonicsprogramme and how it can be used to improve children's outcomes in reading andwriting.

Different programmes – similar principles

The principles underlying Letters and Sounds are common to other phonicsprogrammes. Settings and schools will wish to decide which programme to use,bearing in mind that the most important consideration is whether the programmemeets the criteria for high-quality phonics work and is compatible with the EarlyYears Foundation Stage (EYFS).

Following a single programme sequence

Whichever programme you choose, it’s important to follow the sequence of thephonic content consistently from start to finish. This approach is most likely to secureoptimum progress in children’s acquisition of phonic knowledge and skills, whereasmixing parts of different sequences from more than one programme can slow theirprogress.



Adhering to the sequence of phonic content of the programme does not, however,prevent settings and schools from supplementing their chosen programme by usingadditional resources, such as flashcards and mnemonics, which they makethemselves or purchase from commercial sources.

Related Links

• Criteria for assuring high-quality phonics work

Phonics, reading andcomprehensionRead about the goals of this high-quality phonics programme and how it supportschildren’s development. Explore its use of oral blending and segmentation and howapplying this key approach helps children to become fluent readers.

Reading and comprehension

Phonics is a means to an end. Systematic, high-quality phonics teaching is essential,but more is needed for children to achieve the goal of comprehension in reading.

One goal of the programme is to allow children to progress from learning to read toreading to learn. Letters and Sounds is designed as a time-limited programme ofphonic work aimed at securing fluent word-recognition skills for reading by the end ofKey Stage 1, although the teaching and learning of spelling, which children generallyfind harder than reading, will continue.

Oral blending and segmentation

Oral blending and segmentation, which are the reverse of each other, help children toblend and segment for reading and spelling when they learn letters. Children enjoygames where they use their blending and segmenting skills to help a toy which cansay and understand words only phoneme by phoneme. In these activities the term‘sound-talk’ is used to describe the process of saying the phonemes in words.



http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/teachingstyles/phonics/a0010240/criteria-for-assuring-high-quality-phonic-work

The skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes, in order, all through the word to readit, tends to receive too little attention in the teaching of phonics; it is very important tomake sure that children secure blending skills.

Applying phonics to reading and writing

Children need to understand the purpose of learning phonics and have lots ofopportunities to apply their developing skills in interesting and engaging reading andwriting activities.

As soon as children know a handful of letters, they are shown how to read and spellwords containing those letters. In phase two, once the children have learned a set ofthree letters, it is possible to make up short captions to read with the children, suchas ‘a cat on a sack’. Further, in the course of phase three, many words becomeavailable for labels and notices in the role-play area, captions and even shortinstructions and other sentences. It is important to demonstrate reading and writing incontext every day to make sure that children apply their phonic knowledge whenreading and writing in their role-play and other chosen activities. By the end of phasethree, children should be able to write phonemic approximations of any words theywish to use.

Progression, pace and flexibilityLetters and Sounds offers a sequence that helps children to build their skillsthroughout six phases. Although it’s important to follow this sequence, you can adaptthe pace and focus of these phases to suit children’s progression. See how thisprinciple supports the programme and how you can be flexible when moving fromone phase to the next.

Progression and pace

Although the six-phase structure provides a useful map from which to plan children’sprogress, the boundaries between the phases should not be regarded as fixed.Guided by reliable assessments of children’s developing knowledge and skills,practitioners and teachers will need to judge the rate at which their children are ableto progress through the phases and adapt the pace accordingly. As with much else inthe early years, some children will be capable of, and benefit from, learning at afaster pace than their peers whereas others may need more time and support tosecure their learning.



Examples of where this flexible progression applies include:

• the pace at which the 26 letters of the alphabet are taught• the introduction of digraphs• the introduction of adjacent consonants – practitioners and teachers mayfind that some children can benefit from learning about adjacent consonantsearlier than is suggested in the phase structure.

In each case, and as a general principle, the pace at which it is suggested thatchildren progress through the phases should be taken as a guide rather than appliedrigidly. The programme is incremental so that successful prior learning will largelydetermine the pace of children’s progress.

The importance of flexibility

Using the six-phase structure flexibly is particularly important in the case of theboundary between phases one and two. For example, it may not be necessary tocomplete all seven aspects of phase one before starting systematic phonic work inphase two. Practitioners and teachers should use their professional judgement todecide at what point children are ready to move on, as well as recognising thatelements of phase one can be valuable to run alongside and complement the work inphase two.

Obviously, practitioners and teachers will not want children to be held back who areclearly ready to begin phase two, or, equally, begin such work if they judge childrenneed further preparatory work to ensure that they can succeed from the start.

The programme is rooted in widely accepted best practice for the Early YearsFoundation Stage in which a high priority is placed on the development of children’sspeaking and listening skills as important in their own right, as well as on preparingthe way for the teaching and learning of reading and writing. It is essential forpractitioners and teachers to make principled, professional judgements aboutchildren’s different and developing abilities to decide when they should startsystematic phonic work and the pace at which they should progress through theprogramme.

The simple view of readingLetters and Sounds is based on a research-based theortetical model that combinesword recognition skills and language comprehension skills to provide a ‘simple view



of reading’. You can see how this is done and how it can be plotted on a basicquadrant to help you chart children’s progression.

The ‘simple view of reading’

Systematic, high quality phonics teaching will prepare children for reading, helpingthem to recognise and decode words. However, if they are to become proficientreaders and writers, they will also need to develop word recognition and languagecomprehension. The ‘simple view of reading’ recognises that both word recognitionand language comprehension skills are essential for reading, but that neither issufficient on its own.

The development quadrant

You can plot children’s development in simple stages on this quadrant to help identifytheir achievements, and where they might need extra support.

In 2006, the Review recommended systematic, ‘high-quality phonics work’ as theprime means for teaching beginners to learn to read. The Review also emphasisesthe importance of fostering speaking and listening skills from birth onwards in thehome environment, in Early Years settings and in schools, making full use of the richopportunities for developing children’s language that all these provide. The Reviewaffirms that children’s acquisition of speaking and listening skills, and phonicknowledge and skills, are greatly enhanced by a ‘multi-sensory’ approach. Examplesof multi-sensory activities are given in the phases. Early Years practitioners will befully familiar with this type of activity and the value it adds to other areas of learningand development in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

All of these considerations are embedded in the Primary Framework, in the EYFSand in Letters and Sounds.

The purpose of high-quality phonic teaching is for children to secure the crucial skillsof word decoding that lead to fluent and automatic reading, thus freeing them toconcentrate on the meaning of the text.



All but a very few children understand a great deal of spoken language long beforethey start learning to read. In order to comprehend text, however, children must firstlearn to recognise (decode) the words on the page. Once they can do this, they canuse the same processes to make sense of written text as they use to understandspoken language. The ‘simple view’ shows that word recognition (decoding) andlanguage comprehension are both necessary for proficient reading. However, thebalance between the two changes as children acquire decoding skills, and progressfrom learning to read to reading to learn for information and pleasure.

Teaching approachesTeachers and Early Years practitioners can use these suggested teachingapproaches to support and assess children’s phonic development in speaking,reading and spelling. This section focuses on teaching phonemes, letters andsystematic phonics.

Teaching phonemes (sounds)Phonemes are introduced throughout Letters and Sounds. See how these arerepresented and what letters (graphemes) they correspond with on a simple table.You can also read about similar sounds and find advice on pronunciation andaccents.



Representing phonemes

Phonemes are represented by symbols (in most cases familiar graphemes) betweenslash-marks (e.g. /b/). See the phoneme table below, which shows the 44 phonemesgenerally recognised as those of British Received Pronunciation (RP). Thecorrespondences given there are broadly suitable for use in phases two to four andcan be used equally in the grapheme-to-phoneme direction needed for reading andin the phoneme-to-grapheme direction needed for spelling.

The reason for the inclusion of /th/ as well as /th/, and /oo/ as well as /oo/, is that thefamiliar graphemes ‘th’ and ‘oo’ can each represent two phonemes: ‘th’ can representboth a ‘whispery’ (‘unvoiced’) sound as in thin, shown here as /th/, and a ‘buzzing’(‘voiced’) sound as in then, shown here as /th/; ‘oo’ can represent both the vowelsound in book, shown here as /oo/, and the vowel sound in boot, shown here as /oo/.

These distinctions in sound are included so that all 44 phonemes are covered;however, when teaching beginners to read, these distinctions are trivial. Thephonemes /th/ and /th/ are close enough to each other in sound, as are /oo/ and /oo/,that if children say the wrong one in their first attempt at reading a word, switching tothe right one is easy (particularly as children are familiar with the spoken forms ofwords). The /th/ and /th/ phonemes cause no problems at all in spelling, as ‘th’ is theonly possible spelling for both. The spelling of the /oo/ and /oo/ sounds is not asstraightforward; each can be spelt in more than one way.

Consonant phonemes, with samplewords

Vowel phonemes, with samplewords

1. /b/ – bat 13. /s/ – sun 1. /a/ – ant 13. /oi/ – coin

2. /k/ – cat 14. /t/ – tap 2. /e/ – egg 14. /ar/ – farm

3. /d/ – dog 15. /v/ – van 3. /i/ – in 15. /or/ – for

4. /f/ – fan 16. /w/ – wig 4. /o/ – on 16. /ur/ – hurt

5. /g/ – go 17. /y/ – yes 5. /u/ – up 17. /air/ – fair

6. /h/ – hen 18. /z/ – zip 6. /ai/ – rain 18. /ear/ – dear

7. /j/ – jet 19. /sh/ – shop 7. /ee/ – feet 19. /ure/4 – sure



Consonant phonemes, with samplewords

Vowel phonemes, with samplewords

8. /l/ – leg 20. /ch/ – chip 8. /igh/ – night

9. /m/ – map 21. /th/ – thin 9. /oa/ – boat

10. /n/ – net 22. /th/ – then 10. /oo/ – boot

11. /p/ – pen 23. /ng/ – ring 11. /oo/ – look

12. /r/ – rat 24. /zh/³ – vision 12. /ow/ – cow

20. / e/ – corner(the ‘schwa’ – anunstressed vowelsound which isclose to /u/)

Pronunciation

Some children pick up the skill of blending very quickly even if the phonemes are notcleanly pronounced. However, many teachers have found that for other childrenpronouncing the phonemes (e.g. cat as ‘cuh-a-tuh’) can make learning to blenddifficult. It is therefore important to articulate each phoneme as clearly as possible.

Local accents

Many people from the north of England do not have the phoneme /u/ (as in southernpronunciations of up, cup, butter) in their accents. They have the same vowel soundin ‘put’ and ‘but’, which both rhyme with ‘foot’. This is just one example of howaccents affect grapheme–phoneme correspondence and needs to be consideredwhen sounding out.

Phonemes are introduced throughout Letters and Sounds. See how these arerepresented and what letters (graphemes) they correspond with on a simple table.You can also read about similar sounds and find advice on pronunciation andaccents.

Teaching lettersLetters are introduced gradually throughout Letters and Sounds as graphemes. Theteaching approaches show how you can define, teach and practise letters throughmulti-sensory learning and mnemonics. They also suggest when they can be taughtand what development you can expect to see.



Manipulating letters: multi-sensory learning

The processes of segmenting and blending for reading and spelling need to be madeenjoyable and easy for children to understand and apply. Well-timed multi-sensoryactivities serve this purpose and intensify learning. One easily available resource thathas proved very effective in this respect is a set of solid, magnetic letters that can bemanipulated on small whiteboards by children, individually or in pairs. Magneticletters have the advantages, for example, of enabling children to:

• recognise letters by touch, sight and sounding out simultaneously• easily manipulate letters to form and re-form the same sets of letters intodifferent words• compose words by manipulating letters even though children may not yetbe able to write them, for example with a pencil• share the activity and talk about it with a partner• build up knowledge of grapheme–phoneme correspondencessystematically.

Learning a letter

The process of learning a letter comprises:

• distinguishing the shape of the letter from other letter shapes• recognising and articulating a sound (phoneme) associated with the lettershape• recalling the shape of the letter (or selecting it from a display) when givenits sound• writing the shape of the letter with the correct movement, orientation andrelationship to other letters• naming the letter• being able to recall and recognise the shape of a letter from its name.

How quickly can letters be taught?

Even by the age of five, children’s personal experience of letters varies enormously.It ranges from a general awareness of letter shapes on labels, through recognisingletters that occur in their names, to simple reading and writing. Some children mayhave made the important breakthrough of realisating that the sounds they hear inwords are represented with considerable consistency in the letters in written words.Whatever their experience, given good teaching, starting to learn all the letters forreading and writing is an exciting time.

Letters and Sounds is an incremental programme, progressing from the simple to themore complex aspects of phonics at a pace that befits children’s rates of learning.



Sets of letters are recommended, starting in phase two with ‘s’, ‘a’, ‘t’, ‘p’, ‘i’, ‘n’, forteaching in daily sessions of about 20 minutes, with the letters used as quickly aspossible in reading and spelling words. To make the maximum use of any phonicsprogramme it is best to teach the letters in the order the programme suggests.

What are mnemonics and are they necessary?

Some lower-case letters are easily confused. They consist of combinations of straightlines and curves and some are inversions of others (e.g. ‘b’, ‘p’, ‘d’, ‘q’). Mnemonics(memory aids) have proved very useful in helping young children remember letters.The best mnemonics are multi-sensory; they conjure up the shape and the sound ofthe letter. The letter ‘s’ is an excellent example.

• It begins the word 'snake'.• It looks like a snake.• It represents a snake-like sound.• The hand, when writing it, makes a writhing, snake-like movement.

Children love alphabetic mnemonics: the characters, the actions, the sounds. Thereare, however, some caveats to using mnemonics. Teachers need to take care thatreinforcing learning of the alphabet through mnemonics and popular multi-sensoryactivities (e.g. drawing, painting and making models, becoming involved in stories)are understood by the children, not as an end but as the means for learning theirletter shapes, sounds and functions in words. Teachers should ensure the childrenare focused on the phonic purpose of the activities.

When should children learn to form letters as part of thephonics programme?

In phase one, children have been immersed in the ‘straight down’, ‘back up again’,‘over the hill’ and anti-clockwise movements that they eventually need when writingletters, using sand, paint, ribbons on sticks, etc. In addition, they will have had lots offine motor experience with thumb and forefinger as well as using a pencil. So whenmost children start learning to recognise letters they will be able to attempt to writethe letters. Learning handwriting – how letters join – involves a more demanding setof skills but if teaching is appropriate and the handwriting programme introducessome early joins, these are helpful for learning the union of the two letters in agrapheme (e.g. ‘ai’, ‘ ’, ‘ ’).



When should letter names be introduced?

The Early Learning Goals expect letter names to be known by the end of theFoundation Stage. In phonics, letter names are needed when children start to learntwo-letter and three-letter graphemes (phase three) to provide the vocabulary to referto the letters making up the grapheme. It is misleading to refer to the graphemes ‘ai’and ‘th’ as /a/-/i/ and /t/-/h/. Letter names can be successfully taught through analphabet song. These are commercially available but the alphabet can fit many well-known tunes with a bit of tweaking to the rhythm. It is important that a tune is chosenthat avoids bunching letters together so they cannot be clearly articulated.

Supporting children’s approachesFind out why it’s important to focus children’s attention on decoding when readingand how you can support their attempts to spell.

Implications of high-quality phonic work for reading doneby children outside the discrete phonics session

Extensive practice at sounding and blending (decoding) will soon enable manychildren to start reading words automatically. This applies both to words they haveoften decoded and to high-frequency words (e.g. the, to, said) that contain unusualgrapheme–phoneme correspondences. In due course they will start recognisingfamiliar ‘chunks’ in unfamiliar words and will be able to process these words chunk bychunk rather than phoneme by phoneme. However, if children can recognise ‘igh’and ‘ough’ as single units, as we want them to start doing from phase three onwards,there is no reason why they should not start recognising other chunks of three, fourand more letters as single units once they have decoded them often enough.

In the early stages, however, children will encounter many words that are visuallyunfamiliar, and in reading these words their attention should be focused on decodingrather than on the use of unreliable strategies such as looking at the illustrations, re-reading the sentence, saying the first sound and guessing what might fit. Althoughthese strategies might result in intelligent guesses, none of them is sufficientlyreliable and can hinder the acquisition and application of phonic knowledge andskills, prolonging the word recognition process and lessening children’s overallunderstanding. Children who routinely adopt alternative cues for reading unknownwords, instead of learning to decode them, find themselves stranded when textsbecome more demanding and meanings less predictable. The best route for children



to become fluent and independent readers lies in securing phonics as the primeapproach to decoding unfamiliar words.

Self-teaching in reading

Some children will start to self-teach quite early on, particularly for reading purposes.Once they have understood how decoding works, they will work out more of thealphabetic code for themselves and will be able to read texts that go beyond thegrapheme–phoneme correspondences they have been explicitly taught. Even thesechildren, however, will benefit from hearing more complex texts read aloud by anadult. This fosters comprehension and an enjoyment of books – so much the better ifthey can see and follow the text as it is read.

Independent writing and ‘invented’ spelling

From an early stage, some children may start spontaneously producing spellingssuch as frend for friend and hoam for home, or even chrain for train or nyoo for new.Teachers should recognise worthy attempts made by children to spell words butshould also correct them selectively and sensitively. If this is not done, inventedspellings may become ingrained.

Systematic phonicsPhase two marks the beginning of systematic, high-quality phonics work. This is besttaught in short, discrete daily sessions, with ample opportunities for children to useand apply their phonic knowledge and skills throughout the day.

Right from the start, however, every child will need to experience success, movingincrementally from the simple to the more complex aspects of phonic work. Phasetwo therefore starts with a tried and tested approach to learning a selection of letters(‘s’, ‘a’, ‘t’, ‘p’, ‘i’, ‘n’) and emphasises multi-sensory activities. Letters and Sounds isdesigned to help practitioners and teachers track children’s progress and shouldenable them to make reliable assessments for learning within and across the phases.

As noted, each phase in the six-phase structure dovetails with the next. The teachingprogramme for reading is time-limited and should end with the completion of phasesix when the great majority of children will have mastered decoding print. Thereafter,by reading extensively, they will continue to hone their phonic skills and increase thepace of their reading. Acquiring proficiency in spelling for most children is unlikely to



keep pace with acquiring proficiency in reading. Spelling will, therefore, requirefurther development beyond phase six.

Each of the six phases suggests activities for teaching phonic knowledge and skillsincrementally. These activities are illustrative examples. They do not constitute a totalset of daily lesson plans. For example, in teaching letter recognition in phase two, theletter ‘s’ is taken to illustrate how to teach a discrete phoneme and its correspondinggrapheme. Practitioners and teachers can apply this model to teaching the otherletters of the alphabet in the order given in the programme, starting with ‘s’, ‘a’, ‘t’, ‘p’,‘i’, ‘n’.

Phase summarySee how Letters and Sounds helps children to develop their listening, speaking,reading, and spelling skills through six phases. For each phase, you can discover theteaching focus, what to expect and where to find further support.

Moving through the phases

The boundaries between the phases in Letters and Sounds are deliberately porousso that no children are held back or unduly pressured to move on before they areable to. This gives you the opportunity to make principled decisions based on reliableassessments when planning for progression within and across the phases.

Phase one

Phase one supports the development of speaking and listening, emphasising theircrucial importance as skills in their own right, while paving the way for high-qualityphonic work.

Phase two

Phase two marks the start of systematic phonic work. It begins the introduction ofgrapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs). Decoding for reading and encodingfor spelling are taught as reversible processes. As soon as the first fewcorrespondences have been learned, children are taught to blend and segment withthem.



In phase one, blending and segmenting activities are purely oral, involving no letters(you will have pronounced the sounds to be blended, rather than expecting thechildren to pronounce them in response to letters). However, in phase two, childrenlearn to pronounce the sounds themselves in response to letters, before blendingthem This begins their reading experience of simple VC (vowel-consonant) and CVC(consonant-vowel-consonant) words. They also do this process in reverse, as theysegment whole spoken words into phonemes and select letters to represent thosephonemes. They do this by writing the letters (if they have the necessary physicalcoordination) or by using solid, usually magnetic, letters to encode words.

Phase three

Phase three completes the teaching of the alphabet. Children move on to soundsrepresented by more than one letter, learning one representation for each of at least42 of the 44 phonemes generally recognised as those of British ReceivedPronunciation (RP). Just one spelling is given for each.

Phase four

In phase four children learn to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants.Many children are capable of taking this step much earlier, in which case you canwork with them while teaching phase three to others. No new grapheme–phonemecorrespondences are taught in this phase.

Phase Five

This phase would not be needed if there were a perfect one-to-one mapping betweengraphemes and phonemes. However, English is unlike most other languages; manyof the mappings are one-to-several in both directions, most phonemes can be spelledin more than one way, and most graphemes can represent more than one phoneme.During this phase, tricky words and high-frequency unusual words are taught.

Phase Six

In phase six reading should become automatic for the great majority of children.However, children are usually less proficient at spelling than they are at reading. Thisis because spelling requires recalling and composing the word from memory withoutseeing it. Reading and spelling become less easily reversible as children startworking with words containing sounds (particularly vowel sounds) that can be spelledin more than one way.



Phase six is a good time to focus more sharply on word-specific spellings and broadguidelines that help children to make choices between spelling alternatives.

Phase one foundationsLetters and Sounds begins with a focus on speaking and listening. This can help youto provide a strong foundation for children’s development before they beginsystematic phonic work. Explore how this phase supports a rich curriculum withlanguage experience. You can also see how it reduces the risk of children fallingbehind in reading and supports children who are learning English as an additionallanguage.

Developing speaking and listening skills

Phase one focuses on developing speaking and listening skills to:

• create a strong foundation for reading and writing• help children know and understand words before they start on systematicphonics.

It provides a broad and rich language experience for children, which is the hallmarkof good Early Years practice. During this phase and beyond, children are encouragedto become actively engaged: to talk a lot, to increase their stock of words and toimprove their command of dialogue.

Offering a range and depth of language

A rich curriculum offers a range and depth of language experiences to children. Oftenthis incorporates the power of story, rhyme, drama and song to fire children’simagination and encourage them to use language. It offers opportunities to hear anduse language from non-fiction sources as well as fiction. It uses interestinginvestigations (e.g. scientific and historical sources) to capture interest and preparefor the move into reading and writing. Throughout all these activities, the experienceis strengthened with consistent praise, and learning is made as rewarding aspossible.

Additional support

High-quality phonic teaching can substantially reduce the number of children at riskof falling below age-related expectations for reading. Moreover, the focus on ‘quality



first’ teaching should help to reduce the need for supplementary programmes.However, some children may experience transitory or longer-term conditions such asaural, visual or speech-related impairments. Even a mild, fluctuating hearing loss canhinder normal communication development, slow children’s progress and lead tofeelings of failure and social isolation. Obviously, as with concerns about any aspectof children’s physical condition, risks to their communication and languagedevelopment must be shared with parents or carers so that the situation can be fullyinvestigated and professional help sought. Where hearing loss, for example, hasbeen ruled out and practitioners and parents or carers continue to have concernsabout a child’s development, advice should be sought from the local speech andlanguage therapy service.

Children learning English as an additional language

The emphasis given to speaking and listening in the programme and especially inphase one will help practitioners to strengthen provision for children learning Englishas an additional language. Listening to lengthy stretches of language where both thespeaker and the topic are unfamiliar makes great demands on children for whomEnglish is a new language. A familiar speaker using imaginative resources tostimulate talk about a topic that the children are already familiar with will provide amore helpful context for these children. Equally, the programme offers manyopportunities for planned adult-led and child-initiated small-group and partner work toencourage these children to communicate in English as early as possible.

Letters and Sounds: OverviewDownload the printable table Letters and sounds overview to support your long-termplanning, with each phase simply summarised.

Each phase includes new teaching areas, words to teach, where to focus yourteaching, and what outcomes you can expect.

File Attachments

• Letters and sounds overview ( pdf 45 KB )



http://www.directoryofchoice.co.uk/node/41206

http://www.directoryofchoice.co.uk/node/41206/file

High-frequency wordsSee how children’s grapheme-phoneme knowledge (when sounding out andblending) underpins their recognition of high-frequency words.

Supporting efficient learning

High-frequency words have often been regarded as ‘sight words’, which need to berecognised as a visual whole without much attention to the grapheme–phonemecorrespondences in them (even when those correspondences are straightforward).However, research has shown that word recognition is most efficient when it isunderpinned by grapheme–phoneme knowledge.

When to teach decodable words

What counts as ‘decodable’ depends on the grapheme–phoneme correspondencesthat have been taught. Letters and Sounds recognises this and aligns theintroduction of high-frequency words as far as possible with this teaching. A quarterof the 100 words occurring most frequently in children’s books are decodable atphase two.

Once children are decoding, sounding out and blending vowel-consonant (VC) andconsonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, they can begin to read words withoutovert sounding and blending. This gives them the experience of what it feels like toread words automatically. About half of the 100 words are decodable by the end ofphase four and the majority by the end of phase five.

Unusual high-frequency words

Even the core of high-frequency words, which are not transparently decodable usingknown grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs), usually contain at least oneGPC which is familiar. Rather than approach these words as though they are uniqueentities, it is advisable to start from what is known and register the ‘tricky bit’ in theword. Even the word ‘yacht’ – often considered one of the most irregular Englishwords – has two of the three phonemes represented with regular graphemes.



Making assessmentsThere are assessment opportunities throughout the Letters and Sounds programme,for each phase and within each activity. See how these assessments can be madeusing practice activities, grapheme-phoneme tables, words and captions.

When and how?

It’s important for children’s progress to be tracked through a reliable assessmentprocess, so that any learning difficulties can be identified at an early stage. As part ofthis, children’s letter knowledge and ability to segment and blend need to beassessed individually, as their progress isn’t always clear during group activities. Youcan use the grapheme-phoneme tables under 'teaching materials' to help you selectwhere to focus your practice and assessment.

Practice activities

Each session in phases two to five of Letters and Sounds includes assessmentopportunities as children practise grapheme recognition, blending or segmentation.For instance, in grapheme recognition, a child can point to the letters for otherchildren to identify while you observe and assess. You can also make assessmentswhile children are writing with magnetic letters or using the whiteboard. You can alsoask them to read individual words.

Teaching materialsThese tables, definitions and explanations can help you to plan and teach Lettersand Sounds.

Download the grapheme and phoneme tables which focus on graphemes orphonemes, and consonants or vowels.

You can also find a short list of key working terms to check your understanding whenplanning and referring to development with other practitioners and parents.



Grapheme and phoneme tablesDownload these tables to support your teaching of graphemes (letters) andphonemes (sounds). The tables are designed to support your teaching focus oneither graphemes or phonemes and either consonants or vowels. Each table lists allthe corresponding letters and sounds, along with words that commonly use these,and some rare or unusual high-frequency words.

A note on the phoneme /zh/

The grapheme ‘zh’ does not occur in English words, but /zh/ is a logical way ofrepresenting this isolated phoneme on paper. There is no other simple and obviousway, and the phoneme is the ‘buzzing’ (voiced) version of the ‘whispery’ (unvoiced)sound /sh/, just as /z/ is the voiced version of /s/. Because this sound does not occurin simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, however, it can be omitted fromphase three.

This phoneme does not occur in all accents. It occurs only if people pronounce wordssuch as sure and poor with an /ooer/ vowel sound, not if they pronounce them asshaw and paw. This can be omitted from phase three or permanently.

Node informationAttachments Zip:

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• Phonemes to graphemes table (consonants) ( pdf 53 KB )• Phonemes to graphemes table (vowels) ( pdf 53 KB )• Graphemes to phonemes table (consonants) ( pdf 193 KB )• Graphemes to phonemes table (vowels) ( pdf 129 KB )• Grapheme and phoneme tables ( pdf 145 KB )

TerminologyPhonics has a large technical vocabulary; however, only a small part of this is usedfor Letters and Sounds. You can use this short list of key working terms to check yourunderstanding when planning your teaching of this phonics programme. You mightalso find the list a useful reference when talking with other practitioners and parents.



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Phonics

Phonics is an overall term that refers to the learning of letters and their correspondingsounds. It uses the alphabet to make sounds, which are then segmented andblended to decode words for reading and encode words for spelling.

Phonemes

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word that can change the meaning ofthe word (e.g. in /bed/ and /led/ the difference between the phonemes /b/ and /l/signals the difference in meaning between the words 'bed' and 'led').

It is generally accepted that most varieties of spoken English use about 44phonemes. In alphabetic writing systems (such as English), phonemes arerepresented by graphemes.

Graphemes

A grapheme is the symbol of a phoneme (i.e. a letter or group of letters thatrepresent a sound). There is always the same number of graphemes in a word asphonemes. The alphabet contains only 26 letters but we use it to make all thegraphemes that represent the phonemes of English.

Grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs)

We convert graphemes to phonemes when we are reading aloud (decoding writtenwords). To do this, children need to learn which graphemes correspond to whichphonemes and vice versa. In order to read an unfamiliar word, a child must recognise(‘sound out’) each grapheme, not each letter (e.g. sounding out ship as /sh/-/i/-/p/ not/s/- /h/ - /i/ - /p/), and then merge (blend) the phonemes together to make a word.

Phoneme-grapheme correspondences

We convert phonemes to graphemes when we are spelling (encoding words forwriting). This is the reverse of the grapheme-phoneme correspondence process.



Segmenting and blending

Segmenting and blending are reversible key phonic skills. Segmenting consists ofbreaking down words into their constituent phonemes to spell. Blending consists ofbuilding words from their constituent phonemes to read.

Digraphs and trigraphs (and four-letter graphemes)

A digraph is a two-letter grapheme where two letters represent one sound (e.g. ‘ea’ in‘seat’, ‘sh’ in ship). A trigraph is a three-letter grapheme where three letters representone phoneme (e.g. ‘eau’ in ‘bureau’, and ‘igh’ in ‘night’). A four-letter grapheme usesfour letters to represent one phoneme (e.g. ‘eigh’ representing the /ai/ phoneme ineight and in weight.

Split digraphs

A split digraph has a letter that splits (comes between) the two letters in the digraph.For example, in ‘make’ and ‘take’, ‘k’ separates the digraph ‘ae’, which represents thephoneme /ai/ in both words.

There are six split digraphs in English spelling:

• a-e (as in ‘make’)• e-e (as in ‘scene’)• i-e (as in ‘like’)• o-e (as in ‘bone’)• u-e (as in ‘cube’)• y-e (as in ‘type’)

Few words have more than one letter in the middle of a split digraph (e.g. ache,blithe, cologne, scythe).

Abbreviations

V is used to represent ‘vowel’. C is used to represent ‘consonant’. They are used todescribe the order of graphemes in a word.

VC is used to represent a word that contains a vowel followed by a consonant (e.g.‘am’, ‘each’). CVC represents consonant-vowel-consonant (e.g. ‘Sam’, ‘beach’).CCVC represents consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant (e.g. ‘slam’, ‘bleach’).



Documents

Letters and Sounds - YorOK Website Old/YorkWorkforceDevelopment/Letters... · blend and segment for reading and spelling when they ... Letters and Sounds offers a sequence that helps