Phase 1
Phase 1 concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and is the basis for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. 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 2
In Phase 2, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time. A set of letters is taught each week, in the following sequence:
Set 1 : s,a,t,p
Set 2: i,n,m,d
Set 3: g,o,c,k
Set 4: ck,e,u,r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
The children will begin to learn to blend and segment to begin reading and spelling. This will begin with simple words.
Tricky words introduced in Phase 2
| the | to | I |
| go | into | no |
Phase 3
By the time they reach Phase 3, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 letters taught in Phase 2.
Over the twelve weeks which Phase 3 is expected to last, twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a time).
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, er
Tricky words introduced in Phase 3:
| we | me | be | was | no | go |
| my | you | they | her | all | are |
Phase 4
By Phase 4 children will be able to represent each of 42 phonemes with a grapheme. They will blend phonemes to read CCVC and CVCC words and segment these words for spelling. They will also be able to read two syllable words that are simple. They will be able to read all the tricky words learnt so far and will be able to spell some of them.
This phase consolidates all the children have learnt in the previous phases.
Tricky words introduced in Phase 4:
| said | so | she | he | have | like |
| some | come | were | there | little | one |
| they | all | are | do | when | out |
| what | my | her |
By this point children would be expected to be reading CVC words at speed along with the tricky words from the previous phases. It is important that children are taught that blending is only necessary when a word is unfamiliar.
Phase 5
Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these graphemes and graphemes they already know. They will begin to learn to choose the appropriate grapheme when spelling. The children will be automatically decoding a large number of words for reading by this point.
Tricky words introduced in Phase 5:
| oh | their | people | Mr | Mrs | looked |
| called | asked | ||||
| water | where | who | again | thought | through |
| work | mouse | many | laughed | because | different |
| any | eyes | friends | once | please |
New graphemes for reading
| ay (day) | oy (boy) | wh (when) | a-e (make) |
| ou (out) | ir (girl) | ph (photo) | e-e (these) |
| ie (tie) | ue (blue) | ew (new) | i-e (like) |
| ea (eat) | aw (saw) | oe (toe) | o-e (home) |
| au (Paul) | u-e (rule) |
During this phase children will begin reading words fluently and no longer be blending and segmenting familiar words.
The real focus throughout the phase is to not only learn the new graphemes for reading but also to learn to read words with alternative pronunciations. Children also will need to learn alternative spellings for each phoneme.
Phase 6
In phase 6 children will be reading longer and less familiar texts independently and fluently. It is crucial that at this point children are now reading to learn and reading for fun.
Children should be able to read the 300 high frequency words. At this point it is important that comprehension strategies are developed so that children clarify meaning, ask and answer questions about the texts they are reading, make mental images during reading and summarise what they have read.
In spelling children are introduced to the adding of suffixes and how to spell longer words. Throughout the phase children are encouraged to develop strategies for learning spellings.