Phonics

Level 1 of Twinkl Phonics concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for all future phonic work.

Level 1 is divided into seven aspects:

A1 – Environmental
A2 – Instrumental sounds
A3 – Body Percussion
A4 – Rhythm and rhyme
A5 – Alliteration
A6 – Voice sounds
A7 – Oral blending and segmenting.

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)

In Level 2, letters and their sounds (phonemes) 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

Children are taught that words are constructed from phonemes and that the sound they make are represented by graphemes. Children learn to blend them together to read simple words and segment them to support spelling simple words such as ‘sad’, ‘hot’, ‘mess’.

New graphemes are introduced one at a time in the following sequence:

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

In Level 4, no new graphemes are introduced. The main aim of this level is to consolidate the children’s knowledge learnt previously and apply this into two syllable and polysyllable words such as ‘sandpit’, ‘windmill’ and ‘lunchbox’. There is also an emphasis on teaching words which have adjacent consonants, such as ‘strap’, ‘start’, ‘pumpkin’ and ‘monster’.

In Level 5 children will be taught some 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. For example, children will already know /ai/ as in ‘rain’, but now they will be introduced to /ay/ as in ‘day’ and /a-e/ as in ‘make’. Alternative pronunciations for graphemes will also be introduced, e.g. /ea / in ‘tea’, ‘head’ and ‘break’.

Digraphs: wh, ph, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, ew, oe, au
Split digraphs: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e

Phonics – Phonics teaches children to listen to and identify the sounds that make up words. This helps them to read and write words.

Blend – Saying the individual sounds that make up a word and then merging or blending the sounds together to say the word – used when reading.

Segment – This is the opposite of blending. Splitting a word up into individual sounds – used when spelling and writing.

Vowel – The letters a, e, i, o, u.

Consonant – Most letters of the alphabet (excluding the vowels: a,e,i,o,u).

CVC words – Abbreviation used for consonant-vowel-consonant words, used to describe the order of sounds. Some examples of CVC words are: cat, pen, top, chat (because ch makes one sound).

Other similar abbreviations include:
VC words: on, is, it
CCVC words: trap and black
CVCC words: milk and fast

Phoneme –  A single sound that can be made by one or more letters – e.g. s, k, z, oo, ph, igh.

Grapheme – Written letters or a group of letters which represent one single sound (phoneme) e.g. a, l, sh, air, ck.

Digraph – Two letters which together make one sound e.g. ee, oa, ea, ch, ay. There are different types of digraph:
• Vowel digraph: a digraph in which at least one of the letters is a vowel, for example; boat or day.
• Consonant digraph: two consonants which can go together, for example shop or thin.
• Split digraph (previously called magic e): two letters, which work as a pair to make one sound, but are separated within the word e.g. a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e. For example cake or pine.

Trigraph – Three letters which go together make one sound e.g. ear, air, igh, dge, tch.

Pure sound – Pronouncing each letter sound clearly and distinctly without adding additional sounds to the end e.g. ‘f’ not ‘fuh.’ Top Tip – It is tricky to say some sounds without the ‘uh’ sound at the end – like b, d, v and g! Try to emphasise the main letter sound when talking about these letter sounds. Some are easier to say by dragging the sound out e.g. ffffff rather than ‘fuh’ or mmmmmm rather than ‘muh.’

Tricky words – Words that are difficult to sound out e.g. said, the, because.