Letters and Sounds: Principles & Practice of High Quality Phonics Phase 1-6 Spiral 

Phase One

Seven aspects and three strands

Phase One activities are arranged under the following seven aspects.

■ 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

Phase Two

(up to 6 weeks)

Contents

 

■ Summary

■ Suggested daily teaching in Phase Two

■ Suggested timetable for Phase Two – discrete teaching

■ Teaching sets 1–5 letters 51

■ Practising letter recognition (for reading) and recall (for spelling)

■ Practising oral blending and segmentation 55

■ Teaching and practising blending for reading VC and CVC words

■ Teaching and practising segmenting VC and CVC words for spelling

■ Teaching and practising high-frequency (common) words

■ Introducing two-syllable words for reading

■ Teaching reading and writing captions

■ Assessment

■ Bank of suggested words for practising reading and spelling

■ Bank of suggested captions for practising reading

Phase Three

(up to weeks)

Contents

■ Summary

■ Suggested daily teaching in Phase Three

■ Suggested timetable for Phase Three – discrete teaching

■ Teaching sets 6 and 7 letters

■ Teaching letter names (if not already taught)

■ Introducing and teaching two-letter and three-letter GPCs

■ Practising grapheme recognition (for reading) and recall (for spelling)

■ Practising blending for reading

■ Practising segmentation for spelling

■ Teaching and practising high-frequency (common) words

■ Teaching reading and spelling two-syllable words

■ Practising reading and writing captions and sentences

■ Assessment

■ Bank of suggested words, captions and sentences

Phase Four

(4-6) weeks

Contents

■ Summary

■ Suggested daily teaching in Phase Four

■ Suggested timetable for Phase Four – discrete teaching

■ Practising grapheme recognition (for reading) and recall (for spelling)

■ Teaching blending for reading CVCC and CCVC words

■ Teaching segmenting for spelling CVCC and CCVC words

■ Practising reading and spelling words with adjacent consonants

■ Teaching and practising high-frequency (common) words

■ Practising reading and spelling two-syllable words

■ Practising reading and writing and sentences

■ Assessment

■ Bank of suggested words and sentences for use in Phase Four

Phase Five

(throughout Year 1)

Contents

■ Summary

■ Suggested daily teaching in Phase Five

■ Suggested timetable for Phase Five – discrete teaching

■ Reading

○ Teaching further graphemes for reading

○ Teaching alternative pronunciations for graphemes

○ Practising recognition of graphemes in reading words

○ Teaching and practising reading high-frequency (common) words

○ Practising reading two-syllable and three-syllable words

○ Practising reading sentences

■ Spelling

○ Teaching alternative spellings for phonemes

○ Learning to spell and practising high-frequency words

○ Practising spelling two-syllable and three-syllable words

○ Practising writing sentences

■ Assessment

■ Bank of words and other materials for use in Phase Five activities

Phase Six

(throughout Year 2)

Contents

■ Summary

■ Reading

■ Spelling

■ Teaching spelling

○ Introducing and teaching the past tense

○ Investigating and learning how to add suffixes

○ Teaching spelling long words

○ Finding and learning the difficult bits in words

■ Learning and practising spellings

■ Application of spelling in writing

○ Marking

○ Children gaining independence

■ Knowledge of the spelling system

○ Some useful spelling guidelines

○ Adding suffixes to words

■ Practice examples