Month: March 2025

Phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 9 & 10 – (4 years – 7+ years)

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Phonics is learning the relationship between the individual sounds (phonemes) of our language and the way we represent them in writing through letters (graphemes).

Stage 9 – Phonetic reading

With the introduction of phonics into the National Curriculum children are being taught to read by using their phonics knowledge as a decoding tool to work out what words are. First, they have to recognize the letters and combinations, then attach associated sounds (phonemes) to them and finally blend the sounds together to form the word.

Children are not encouraged to focus on anything else, such as pictures or context, just the phonics element of the text. For phonics teaching schemes that haven’t taught a comprehensive range of letter to sound associations, phonics at an early stage is not sufficient and children also need to learn to recognize whole words which are not spelt phonetically, the tricky words (sight words) such as: was, want, because and like.

To emphasize this point; The National Curriculum for Year 1 Reading, as part of the statutory requirements, states that children should be taught to:

“read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words” (DfE Sept 2014).

Stage 10 – Phonetic spelling

It is generally accepted that using phonics for spelling develops at a slower rate than that for reading; due to the child having to learn how to form the letters (handwriting) rather than just recognizing the visual association between the sounds and corresponding letters.

Children are taught to use their phonics knowledge as an encoding tool for spelling, first identifying the individual sounds (phonemes) in the word, then attaching associated letters for those phonemes and finally writing the letters and self-checking the spelling using their phonetic reading skills.

It is important that children understand, and can easily use, the letter names of the alphabet and not just make a certain sound associated to the letter. Using the letter name is the only way to distinguish between alternative spellings of the same sound. For example, ‘ph’ in the word ‘photo’ cannot be spelt out phonetically, you have to use the letter names otherwise children will spell it ‘foto’. A similar, more common, tricky spelling is the word ‘what’; you have to use the letter names to explain this spelling otherwise a child will spell it ‘wot’.

“Tricky” words

Because many phonics schemes do not teach the letter associations required for children to decode / encode high frequency words phonetically, such as: was, they, my, are. These are taught by rote.

Phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 8 – (4 years – 7+ years)

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Phonics is learning the relationship between the individual sounds (phonemes) of our language and the way we represent them in writing through letters (graphemes).

The phonics stage in phonological awareness development is being introduced to our children at a much younger age, it used to be the second term of reception class, but phonic schemes in the UK have moved to starting in the first term of Reception. This is regardless of the child’s actual phonological ability levels.

For us, as adults, this can seem a little daunting as most of us were not brought up with phonics as the main strategy for learning to read or spell.

For a child who has developed through all the pre-phonic stages 1 to 7 for good phonological awareness the phonics stage is a natural progression, allowing them to use all the segmentation, blending, substitution and deletion skills previously learnt.

It is important that your child understands that letters have names; just like they do, and just like them they make different sounds. Knowing the letter names allows them to understand which letter you are talking about when discussing letters and sounds as the letter name is the unique characteristic of the letter – as it can make more than one sound. A classic example is the word ‘was’, if spelt phonetically it would be ‘woz’.

Your child should already have been taught the names (not sounds) of the letters of the alphabet, this is an early years requirement. Sadly, some feel that if a child can recite the alphabet song, they know the names of the letters, this I just not true!

Understanding letter names is important in the teaching of phonics as children need to develop an understanding that a letter can make different sounds depending on the location and pairing with other letters.

For example, the letter ‘a’ can make a number of different sounds on its own depending on the word it is in: ant, baby, swan and with other letters as in words like day, train and car.

Phonics programs tend to teach:

The use of phonic skills to blend and segment the written forms of words (CVC words) starting with one sound – one letter correspondence such as sat, pat and dog.

Develop understanding that one sound consonant can be represented by two letters (digraph) such as ‘ch’ in ‘chip’ or ‘sh’ in ‘shop’.

Develop understanding that one vowel sound can be represented by two letters (vowel digraph) such as ‘ea’ in ‘head’, ‘ai’ in ‘rain’.

Develop understanding that some sounds are represented by 3 or 4 letter combinations such as ‘igh’ in ‘light’ and ‘eigh’ in ‘eight’.

Identifying the initial, end and medial sounds and their corresponding letter(s).

However, many phonics schemes teach high frequency words by rote as they do not teach the letter associations required for children to decode / encode them phonetically. Word such as: is, the, was, what, and any.

Pre-phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 7 – (5 years – 7 years)

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Phonological awareness relates to our sensitivity and understanding of the sound structures of our oral language. It enables us to progress from our awareness of large sound units (words in sentences) to smaller sound units (phonemes in words). It also incorporates the ways in which we communicate through speech, body language and written forms.

Your child needs to continue developing their understanding of language, its sound structure, grammatical rules and conventions through talking and playing. They need to be able to say what they think and can often only write what they can say, so they need to be able to talk it before they can write it. We cannot expect them to write well later if they cannot talk or express their thoughts and ideas through language, whether that be spoken or signed. So, you need to continue engaging them in conversation and exposing them to new vocabulary and concepts.

Phonemic Awareness – Part 2 – Phoneme substitution and deletion

Having mastered Phonemic Awareness Part 1, the next stage in the process is learning and understanding how substituting and deleting phonemes can create new words. This is still based on what we hear, not the written word.

We usually introduce this concept to children using one syllable CVC words, a word that has a Consonant followed by a Vowel and then another Consonant, such as hat, cat and mat.

Phoneme substitution

To begin with focus on helping your child to substitute the first sound in a word, for example replacing the ‘h’ sound in hat with an ‘m’ sound gives mat; or replacing with a ‘b’ sound gives bat.

Once they become comfortable with substituting the initial sound, progress to substituting the last sound in the word, for example replacing the ‘t’ sound in mat with a ‘p’ sound gives map; or replacing it with an ‘n’ sound gives man.

Then focus on the medial, or middle, sound in the word, for example substituting the ‘a’ in hat with an ‘i’ sound gives hit, or replacing it with an ‘o’ sound gives hot and with an ‘u’ sound gives hut.

Phoneme deletion

As with substitution begin by focusing on helping your child to delete the first sound in a word, for example removing the ‘s’ sound in stop gives the new word top; or deleting the ‘c’ sound in cart gives the new word art.

Once they become comfortable with deleting the initial sound, progress to removing the last sound in the word, for example deleting the ‘t’ sound in cart gives the new word car; or removing the ‘k’ sound in fork gives the new word for.

However not all children will find the concept of substitution and deletion of phonemes easy and it may be beneficial to move on to the next stage and then revisit this section, as the visual aid of letters that Stage 8 provides may help support their learning.

Research suggests that, when entering school, having good phonological skills based just on speaking and being able to hear and play with the sounds of language (Stages 1-7) is often a strong predictor of a child’s reading success later.

Pre-phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 6 – (4 years – 6 years)

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Phonological awareness relates to our sensitivity and understanding of the sound structures of our oral language. It enables us to progress from our awareness of large sound units (words in sentences) to smaller sound units (phonemes in words). It also incorporates the ways in which we communicate through speech, body language and written forms.

Talking, listening, sharing, playing and modelling are still vital parts of your child’s physical, emotional and academic development.

Your child is now reaching the pre-school/school stage and the extent of their receptive vocabulary and understanding of the meaning of words and sound units in those words can have a real impact on their ability to cope with the new demands that pre-school and school will place on them.

Phonemic Awareness – Part 1

Phonemic awareness is learning how to split words into their smallest sound units (individual phonemes) and our ability to manipulate these sounds through segmentation, blending and substitution. This is based on what we hear, not the written word.

We usually introduce this concept to children using one syllable CVC words, a word that has a Consonant followed by a Vowel and then another Consonant, such as cat, dog, sit, peg and sun.

To begin with focus on helping your child to identify the first sound in words, remember it is about what you hear not the spelling, so shop, ship, and chef all start with the same first sound ‘sh’; fish, photo, fog would also have the same initial ‘f’ sound. Try not to correct your child based on spelling conventions, as it is sounds you are working on – spelling comes later.

Next help your child to listen and identify the last sound in a word such as ‘t’ in cat, sit and hat.

Then focus on the medial, or middle, sound in the word such as ‘a’ in mat, lap and tap.

We often slow down our pronunciation of the word and over exaggerate them, thinking we are helping our children to hear these sounds. This can be useful to start with, but be careful not to do it all the time. The aim is for your child to pick out the sounds in normal speech patterns, as these can be different from the way that words are spelt.

Once your child can identify the initial, medial and final sounds in a word the next step is to playing with the words through oral phoneme segmentation and oral phoneme blending. You are probably doing this already with your child without really realizing it.

Phoneme segmentation is orally being able to split words into their individual sounds, for example ‘cat’ into c-a-t.

Phoneme blending is orally being able to blend individual sounds together to form a word, for example d-o-g into dog.

The most important thing to remember when modelling this, and when playing games to help develop these skills, is to make sure you are making the sounds correctly. It can be very easy to pollute a sound by adding an extra ‘uh’ sound to it, so ‘c’ becomes ‘cuh’ which makes it very difficult for children then to blend sounds.

When your child feels comfortable using and playing with sounds in CVC words move on to CCVC words such as stop, clop and flop, following the same steps of identifying the initial and last sound in the word and then the vowel sound rather than the middle sound. Then play oral phoneme segmentation and blending games.