Use Fun with Phonics in your daily phonics session to
teach the 44 and alternative phonemes as recommended in Letters and Sounds phases
 
Reception Skills and knowledge
(abbreviated from Letters and Sounds)		 Progression matched in Fun with Phonics
Phase 1 Mostly speaking and listening skills, ie being able to hear a word being broken down into its constituent sounds (b-i-t) and blending again to hear that b-i-t makes 'bit' when you put it all together (this is referred to as oral blending and segmenting). Activities are mostly adult-led and continue to underpin all subsequent phases. The television programmes at the heart of Fun with Phonics encourage speaking and listening skills throughout. The presenters introduce and model the sounds clearly on correctly, first on their own, and then as they are built into words.
Throughout phases 2-6 at increasing levels of complexity
  1. Knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC)
  2. Skills of blending (for reading) and segmenting (for spelling)
  3. High-frequency words (sometimes known as 'tricky' words which don't follow the phonic rules, or which children need to know before the GPC is taught in order to start to read real text.)
  • Reinforced throughout with grapheme on-screen and audio
  • Whirlyword and Pollyphonic, plus related games
  • Introduced in the E big books with facility to highlight and review
Phase 2: up to 6 weeks
  • 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each
  • Blending and segmenting very simple words (cat, sit )
  • High-frequency (e.g. the, to, no)
Fun with Phonics follows the suggested sequence for introducing the alphabet sounds and related simple words for early blending and segmenting
(see Pack 1).
Phase 3: up to 12 weeks
  • 7 more letters of the alphabet
  • Blending and segmenting moves on to include phonemes represented by more than one letter (e.g. chip, moon)
  • High-frequency (e.g. he, she, was, my, they, are)
 Fun with Phonics follows the suggested sequence for introducing the alphabet sounds and digraphs and developing blending and segmenting (see Pack 2).
Phase 4: 4 to 6 weeks
  • No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences, but introduce blending and segmenting words with adjacent consonants (e.g. frog, went, stand)
  • High-frequency words (e.g. said, have, like, when)
 Fun with Phonics Pack 3 moves on to longer words, and continues to teach and review and practise the blending and segmenting processes.
Phase 5: throughout Year 1
  • More alternative graphemes for phonemes taught in phases 2 and 3, and ways of pronouncing graphemes taught in phases 2 and 3
  • High-frequency words (e.g. their, looked, through, mouse, friends, please)
 Fun with Phonics E big books in particular include alternative graphemes and phonemes and build on emerging reading skills.
Phase 6: throughout Year 2 Word-specific spelling and increasingly fluent blending and segmenting. Fun with Phonics provides, especially through the E big books, resources for reinforcement and review, particularly for any children who need to 'catch-up'.
Summary of phases for Letters and Sounds - see Notes of Guidance p 28 for more details
Download and print the Fun with Phonics Components Chart PDF (1.3Mb)