Phase 3 Phonics: Letters and Sounds with Tricky Words

Phonics is a method of teaching children to read. Phonics works by breaking words down into its sounds. 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.

Not all words are phonetically decode-able; however, a select few terms you need to learn through the ‘sight words’ method of learning to read. Sight words are when you learn to read by memorizing 1,000’s of words individually. It would be an easy task for someone who had learned to read with phonics and could use their decoding skills to break each word down into its letter sounds.

The first lesson in phonics is teaching children to recognize and differentiate between different sounds. It typically starts by asking children to listen to sounds that you can hear, such as the sounds that animals make, or sounds you hear when you go outside.

Letters and Sounds Phase 3 for Teaching

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 3 introduces twenty-five new graphemes one at a time. Letters and sounds typically follow this order:

Set 6: j, v, w, x     Set 7: y, z, zz, qu

Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, e

Phase 3 Tricky Words List for Kids

Tricky words are words that children will commonly encounter when they are reading, but they are words that they cannot use their existing phonic knowledge to decode. Tricky words should be taught in a discrete manner so that children can access a broader range of texts without always facing words that they cannot read.

Keep exploring EnglishBix to learn letters and sounds associated with different phonics phases.

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