Phonics is a method of teaching children to read, and it works by breaking words down into its sounds. To your surprise, there are 44 different sounds in the English language. Learning to read with phonics is, therefore, a bit like learning a code, after learning just a few sounds, you will be able to use it to read 100’s of words. The more sounds you know, the more words you will be able to work out how to understand.
Letters and Sounds Phase 1 Phonics
Phase One of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in second phase. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.
Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects. Each aspect contains three strands:
- Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination)
- Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing)
- Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension)
As schooling progresses, children are taught simple; single letter sounds from the alphabet before moving on to learning about digraphs, trigraphs, and split digraphs.
Phase 1 introduces some graphemes one at a time. Phase 1 letters and sounds typically follow this order:
Letters: S, A, T, P, N
Consonant Digraphs: ch, sh, ng, th, ph, sa
Vowel Digraphs: ea, oo, ai, ay, a, oi, oa, ee, igh, eigh, a-e, or, ar, er, ur, eo, oy, at
| Grapheme | Example | Grapheme | Example |
| ch | chop | ea | near |
| sh | ship | ay | day |
| ng | sing | a | apron |
| th | three | ee | sheep |
| ph | photo | oi | coin |
| sa | sad | at | cat |
| ai | rain | eigh | eight |
| igh | fight | a-e | mahe |
| oa | boat | oo | look |
| ar | arm | er | runner |
| or | for | ur | hurt |
| eo | eosin | oy | boy |
| Letters | Words |
| S | Snake |
| A | Apple |
| T | Toy |
| P | Pant |
| N | News |
Keep exploring EnglishBix for more quality resource of different phases of phonics.
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