Phonics (Letters and Sounds)
We use Letters and Sounds to support the systematic teaching of phonics. Children begin phase 2 of Letters and Sounds as soon as they join us in Reception. They continue learning phonics across Reception and Key Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2). Every child is taught phonics daily.
The Letters and Sounds programme is separated into six Phases - your child's teacher will be able to tell you which Phase your child is currently working on.
Pronunciation
Correct pronunciation of the sounds is really important. The video below demonstrates how to pronounce each sound your child will learn.
Vocabulary
Phoneme |
The smallest unit of sound in a word - often referred to as a sound. |
grapheme |
A letter (or sequence of letters) that represent(s) a phoneme. |
Grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) |
The match between a phoneme and grapheme. |
Oral blending |
Say phonemes in the word and blend in your head or out loud. |
blending |
Say individual phonemes, put together to make a word. |
segmenting |
Breaking words or parts of words into phonemes. |
Multisyllabic word |
A word with more than one syllable. |
digraph |
A phoneme that is represented by two letters. e.g. ar, ea, er, oi, ch, th |
trigraph |
A phoneme that is represented by three letters. e.g. air, igh, ear |
Split vowel digraph |
A digraph that is separated by one or more consonants within a word. eg cake, bite, phone, these, cube. |
Adjacent consonants |
Consonants blended together when reading a word. |
Alternative graphemes |
Different representations of a phoneme in a word e.g. high, pie. |