Phonics in Year 1

Year 1

Phase 4 - 4 weeks recap

Phase 5 – 5 weeks – further graphemes for reading
Phase 5 – 4 weeks – alternative pronunciations
Phase 5 – 13 weeks – alternative spellings for phonemes
Phonics Screening Check (PSC) graphemes are included throughout the programme.

Pseudo words are included from Phase 3 Week 12 onwards for Phonics Screening Check practice.

Phase 4

By now, children should be confident with each phoneme. In Phase 4 phonics, children will, among other things:

•  Practise reading and spelling CVCC words (‘such,’ ‘belt,’ ‘milk’ etc)
• Practise reading and spelling high frequency words
• Practise reading and writing sentences
• Learn more tricky words, including ‘have,’ ‘like,’ ‘some,’ ‘little’

Children should now be blending confidently to work out new words. They should be starting to be able to read words straight off, rather than having to sound them out. They should also be able to write every letter, mostly correctly. This phase usually takes four to six weeks, and most children will complete it around the end of Reception. 

Phase 5 

Phase 5 generally takes children the whole of Year 1. Children learn new graphemes (different ways of spelling each sound) and alternative pronunciations for these: for example, learning that the grapheme ‘ow’ makes a different sound in ‘snow’ and ‘cow’. 

They should become quicker at blending, and start to do it silently.

They learn about split digraphs such as the a-e in ‘name.’

They’ll start to choose the right graphemes when spelling, and will learn more tricky words, including ‘people,’ ‘water’ and ‘friend’. They also learn one new phoneme: /zh/, as in ‘treasure.’

By the end of Year 1, children should be able to:

• Say the sound for any grapheme they are shown
• Write the common graphemes for any given sound (e.g. ‘e,’ ‘ee,’ ‘ie,’ ‘ea’)
• Use their phonics knowledge to read and spell unfamiliar words of up to three syllables
• Read all of the 100 high frequency words, and be able to spell most of them
• Form letters correctly

At the end of Year 1, all children are given a Phonics Screening Check to ensure they have mastered the appropriate knowledge.

Phonics intervention

Within the programme, a comprehensive overview of progression is provided. This tool outlines clear incremental progression steps for phonic knowledge and skills, and expectations of progress within and across phases. It enables teachers to conduct frequent and ongoing assessment to track and record children’s progress and to identify those children at, below or above expected levels, so that appropriate support can be provided.

At Christ the King we use catch-up and consolidation programmes in order to support children falling behind who need extra practice. These programmes follow the same
progression as Red Rose Letters and Sounds. The programmes include:
• Fast Track Phonics for Phase 2 to Phase 5
• Bounce Back Phonics for Phase 4 and Phase 5
• Bounce Back Boost Pack for additional elements of Phase 5