Phase 1 Phonics is the first phase of the Department of Education’s ‘Letter and Sounds’ program. This is designed to focus on developing a child’s speaking and listening skills (phonological awareness).

It focuses on developing their:

• Ability to listen attentively
• Vocabulary knowledge
• Confidence in speaking to adults and other children
• Ability to hear the difference between phonemes (sounds)
• Ability to say/repeat clearly the phonemes they hear
• To hear a word and then split that word up and say the individual sound (phonemes) that make up that word (segmentation)

This is all about developing their skills through what they hear and say only (phonemic awareness).

To be honest it is all about playing with sounds and words and having fun.

The 7 areas Phase 1 focuses on; what is referred to as the pre-phonics stages 2 to 7 of a child’s phonological awareness development (https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development.html):

1. Environmental Sound Discrimination
2. Instrumental Sound Discrimination
3. Body Percussion Sound Discrimination
4. Rhythm and Rhyme
5. Alliteration
6. Voice Sounds
7. Oral Blending and Segmenting

Our 6 weeks blog ‘Speaking and Listening’ series focuses on areas 1 to 4, providing practical games and activities to help build your child’s skills.

Week 1. The Importance of Small Talk – https://teachphonics.blog/2020/01/23/the-importance-of-small-talk-week-1-2/

Week 2. Conversational Turn Taking Skills – https://teachphonics.blog/2019/06/20/conversational-turn-taking-skills-part-2/

Week 3. What is Listening? https://teachphonics.blog/2020/02/06/what-is-listening-part-3-2/

Week 4. Games to Develop Listening Skills – Sound Screen Games https://teachphonics.blog/2020/02/13/sound-screen-barrier-games-part-4-2/

Week 5. Games to Develop Listening Skills – Sound Scanning Games https://teachphonics.blog/2020/02/20/sound-scanning-games-to-develop-listening-skills-part-5-2/

Week 6. Games to develop Listening Skills – Music Fun https://teachphonics.blog/2020/02/27/games-to-develop-listening-skills-part-6-2/