At Broomfield Primary School we use a programme called Letters and Sounds. This was produced and recommended by the government.
This table shows a summary of the different phases of learning. All children work at their own ability.
Phase |
Phonic Knowledge and Skills |
Phase One (Nursery/Reception) |
Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting. |
Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeks |
Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions. |
Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeks |
The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language. |
Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeks |
No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump. |
Phase Five (Throughout Year 1) |
Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know. |
Year 2 |
Working through Year 2 spelling Objectives |
In reception Jolly Phonics is also used. This multi-sensory approach teaches the children actions to go with all the sounds.
In years 1 and 2 Letters and Sounds is supplemented with online Phonics Play.
Children learning continues at home with Year 1s taking home phoneme patterns to learn and Year 2s spelling patterns.