What is Letters and Sounds?

Letters and Sounds is a systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics.

It is split into six phases, from starting to learn about sounds at nursery to becoming fluent readers around age 7.

The phonic approach encourages us to directly link letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes), and to teach children pure sounds. 

The relationship between the letter(s) and the sound is called a letter-sound correspondence, also known as a grapheme-phoneme correspondence (or GPC).

Phase 3 Letters and Sounds

Approx. age: 4–5 | Reception
In Phase 3, children build on the letter-sound correspondences learned in Phase 2. They learn consonant digraphs (sounds made up of two letters together such as ‘ch’ or ‘ll’) and long vowel sounds (such as ‘igh’ or ‘ai’).

j – jet, jam, jog, Jan
v – van, vet, velvet
w – wig, will, web
x – fox, box, six
y – yes, yet, yell
z – zip, zig-zag
zz – buzz, jazz
qu – quit, quick, liquid

Consonant digraphs:
ch – chip, chat, rich
sh – shop, shed, fish
th – thin, moth, that
ng – ring, thing, song

Vowel digraphs and trigraphs:
ai – rain, tail, aim
ee – bee, leek, see
igh – high, sigh, might
oa – boat, toad, foal
oo – boot, food, moon
oo – book, wood, foot
ar – park, art, car
or – for, torn, fork
ur – hurt, fur, surf
ow – cow, owl, town
oi – coin, boil, oil
ear – dear, shear, year
air – fair, pair, hair
ure – sure, pure, manure
er – dinner, summer, letter

Phase 5 Letters and Sounds

Approx. age: 5–6 | Year 1
Children will learn some new graphemes for reading. They will also be taught alternative pronunciations for known graphemes. For example, they have already learned ow as in cow and will now learn ow as in blow.

In addition, they will learn alternative spellings for known phonemes. For example, the sound /igh/ has been learned as the grapheme igh as in ‘night’, but can also be spelled y, ie, and i-e.

New graphemes for reading:
ay – day, play, crayon
ou – cloud, sound, about
ie – pie, tie, cried
ea – sea, meat, read
oy – toy, enjoy, boy
ir – bird, shirt, first
ue – blue, true, glue
aw – paw, claw, yawn
wh – wheel, whisper, when
ph – photo, dolphin, alphabet
ew – new, crew, flew
oe – toe, foe, tomatoes
au – Paul, launch, haul
a-e – make, game, snake
e-e – these, Eve, extreme
i-e – like, time, slide
o-e – home, bone, pole
u-e – rule, June, flute

Tricky Words

Phase 2
the, to, no, go, I, into

Phase 3
he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my, her

Phase 4
said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what

Phase 5
oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could

Children learn to read and spell these words.

Common Exception Words

Children learn to read and spell these words.