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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.

Pre-phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 5 – (4 years – 5 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.

By now your child has a large vocabulary and is speaking in complete sentences and understanding more complex sets of instructions. They may not always be grammatically correct and struggle at times with tense, which makes modelling the correct sentence formation and tense use very important. Again, it is not about correcting your child and making them say it again, but you repeating their words clearly using the correct grammatical order and words (modelling).

Onset and Rime

Once your child has learnt to detect syllables in spoken words; they are then able to detect, manipulate and play with the smaller sound units within a syllable. This is an important stage which supports and develops the essential segmentation skills that are needed later for phoneme awareness (single sound awareness in spoken words).

These smaller units of sound in a syllable are called the onset and rime.

The ‘onset’ of a syllable is the initial sound or sounds (usually a consonant or consonants), which is followed by the ‘rime’ of the syllable (always starting with a vowel sound and any following consonants). For example, the onset in cat and dog is also the first sound for the word (c and d), whereas the onset for stop and splat are ‘st’ and ‘spl’ not their initial sound ‘s’.

Some examples:

One syllable words – cat; the ‘c’ is the onset and the ‘at; is the rime; Stop; the ‘st’ is the onset and the ‘op’ is the rime.

Two syllable words – snowman; the ‘sn’ in the first syllable and the ‘m’ in the second syllable are the onsets and the ‘ow’ in the first syllable and the ‘an’ in the second syllable are the rimes.

Some syllables do not have an onset as they are vowel sounds only. For example; in the five syllable word hippopotamus the second and fourth syllables have no onset.

Once a child understands that the rhyme element of a word is the last rime in the final syllable it makes it easier for them to identify and generate rhyming words. This ability is based on the sounds they hear, not on spelling conventions. A spoken rhyming group could be: chair, bear, stare, hair, fare. This helps a child understand and focus on the sound structure of our language.

Learning to group words by sounds also helps children later, as part of their de-coding strategies for learning to read and letter-string patterns for learning and developing spelling strategies.

Most children by this stage will find it fun and fairly easy to produce rhyming words, even if they consist mainly of nonsense words to begin with. However, this is not the case for all children, so moving on to the next stage and coming back to learning how to generate rhymes may be a more practical approach; as they will have developed other skills by then that will help them. But it is important to come back to cover this element later, when letter visual aids can be used to help and support your child’s learning.

Half-term Fun – Clothes Peg Games

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Some fun indoor activities may be the order of the day for this half term as the weather is not so hot.

This is a very simple idea which children love because they can take greater ownership of it. The aim of the activity is to help build up hand and finger strength through using the pegs; however, it can have a dual purpose, helping to keep track of the week by using it as a timetable or for learning spellings or maths activities, as well as supporting the development of language skills.

You do not need anything fancy, just some string (for the washing line), clothes pegs and pieces of paper or card to peg onto the washing line. The washing line can be a permanent fixture or you can just pop it up when you need to use it.

The clothes line needs to be at a height suitable for your child to peg things on to (placed against a wall is a safe option so that no-one can walk into it by accident and hurt themselves).

There are a whole range of games that can be played using this simple washing line and pegs concept:

Memory games – Get your child to peg up 5 to 10 different pictures or items on the line. Then give them 1 minute to remember the items. Once the time is up ask them to look away, or close their eyes, and then you remove one or more of the items. Get them to look back at the line. Can they work out what is missing?

  • You could try just moving one or two of the items around. Can they figure out which ones are in the wrong place and put them back in their correct place?
  • Try swapping an item for something new, which your child did not hang up on the line. Can they work out which is the new item on the line?

Odd One Out – Hang pictures on the line that belong together. Can they pick out the odd item on the line and explain why it is the odd one out.

  • They could all be pictures of fruit with a picture of some clothing
  • They could be shapes with straight sides and one with curves
  • They could all be animals but all are wild with only one being domestic

Sorting – Ask your child to sort all the pictures or items from a selection and to hang all the identical things on the washing line. They could all be the same;

  • Colour
  • Shape
  • Type

Pattern Work – Using pictures, different colour and shaped paper or items create different patterns. The patterns can be based on colour, size or type of object. You can create a pattern sequence on the washing line and then ask your child to try and copy the sequence. Can they explain the pattern and create their own for you to copy and explain?

Pairing or What is the Same? – Hang a range of pictures or items on the line, making sure that some of the items can be paired together because they are exactly the same. They could match because;

  • They are exactly the same e.g., a pair of socks
  • Match numbers to a picture with the same number of items on
  • Match capital to lower-case letters
  • Or have items that can be put together because they are both from the same set, for example they are types of fruit or are the same colour.

Pre-phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 4 – (3 years – 5 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.

As your child interacts more with the world and those around them so their language and communications skills increase and the “Why?” stage is upon you. Yes! It can drive you insane at times but their brains are like a sponge, absorbing all sorts of information.

It is at this stage that your child can easily misunderstand your explanations and develop misconceptions as they try to find reasons and meanings for themselves. So, it can be useful to talk through some things again later, to check what they have understood or think about something. A good way of doing this is to ask them to tell someone else who was not there, perhaps Dad or an older brother/sister for instance. This way you can help them to develop a better understanding of the meaning of the word or concept. You can also broaden their experiences, on which to draw understanding, by setting up play scenarios or other activities.

Syllables

At about 4 years old your child is starting to split words into syllables, this allows them to break down words into manageable sound lengths. A syllable is the largest phonological unit (one or a group of sounds) of a word and is like the rhythmic beat of the word.

Your child is starting to refine their sound unit detection skills, moving them on from the previous stage of hearing and detecting articulatory gestures or features in rhymes, to recognizing them in syllables. They start to hear these sound units in different parts of a word, not just as the final sound unit of a word.

Spoken syllables are organized around the vowel sounds, making counting them easy, as the jaw drops when the vowel sound is spoken in the syllable. Try placing your hand under your jaw with your mouth closed before you say a word. Start with ‘cat’; you will notice the jaw drops once; this is because it is a one syllable (monosyllabic) word. Now try the same thing with the word ‘sunset’; your jaw drops twice as this is a two syllable (disyllabic) word, then try saying ‘important’; your jaw drops three times as this is a three syllable word (trisyllabic). Words that have more than three syllables such as hippopotamus are called polysyllabic words.

Most children will find it easier to identify syllables in compound words to start with. A compound word is formed by two words (root words) put together such as: sunset, hotdog, snowman and postman. They find it easier because the jaw tends to drop quite distinctly as we say the vowel sound in each of the root words and the slow speed at which we tend to say the word.

Children love to clap out the number of syllables in a word. It is important to say the word at a normal speed rather than really slowly as this can distort the word and make it difficult to hear the syllables. To start with your child does not need to be able to count the number of syllables in a word but just be able to recognize them by clapping, stamping or jumping for each syllable of a word. It is thought only about 50% of children can count out the syllables by the age of 4, so you can do the counting for them.

Being able to instinctively break down words into their syllables is the next step in breaking them into smaller logical sound chunks and an important skill set needed later on when your child is developing their reading and spelling strategies.

How we identify syllables in speech is slightly different from how we use syllables to de-code for reading and as a spelling strategy, but we need to talk and hear it first before moving to the written form.

Pre-phonics Skills – Phonological Awareness: Stage 3 – (2 years – 4 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.

By this stage your child’s awareness of rhyme will emerge, with them enjoying nursery rhymes, songs and stories with rhyme alliteration and repetition.

our child is starting to understand the more complex meaning of words and concepts such as positions (on, off, in, out, etc.) prepositions; size (big and small); quantity (1 and 2) and others such as hot, cold, wet, stop, go, loud, quiet, soft, heavy and colours.

Modelling and showing your child, the meaning of words and different concepts is really important if they are to truly understand and use them effectively in their speech (expressive language). For example, if you are trying to help them understand the meaning of wet, use water, show them the difference, and let them experience through touch and play what wet feels like compared with dry.

Explaining and using a word in different situations also helps your child to gain a fuller understanding of a word’s meaning, for instance the words ‘on’ and ‘off’ can be used in different situations; 1. You turn a light on and off. 2. You put the cup on the table or you can take it off the table. 3. Put your shoes on or take your shoes off.

Our language can be very confusing at times so it is important to provide as many opportunities as possible for your child to experience and play with new words and meanings in different ways, locations and times. It is important to model correctly formed sentences and the pronunciation of words. It is NOT about correcting your toddler and making them repeat what you have just said, but repeating back to them what they have said using the correct sentence structure or word pronunciation, modelling (leading by example). They may not be mature enough to pronounce words correctly yet, or form grammatically correct sentence, but it is what they need to be hearing, so they can store the information away for a later date.

Through talking and playing your child is also continuing to develop other key communication skills such as turn taking, understanding facial expressions and body language and the all-important listening skills. Their receptive language skills are growing fast, especially when compared to those of their expressive language, so they still understand far more than they can express.

Rhyme Awareness

Your child is beginning to become more sensitive to the larger segments of sounds within words (articulatory gestures or features). In developing this awareness, they begin to hear and enjoy the rhythmic patterns of these large sound units, providing them with more varied and engaging opportunities for sound and word play.

At about 3 years old research suggests that a child starts to store sounds units into sets that have the same or similar articulatory gestures or features. There is a limited set of articulatory gestures or features in the English language which are then reorganized and positioned in hundreds of different combinations to form words.

By this stage they are enjoying hearing and participating in action and finger rhymes, joining in ones they know and quickly taking on new rhymes and actions. They will of course have favourites which they never tire of hearing or singing (even though you may be going slightly mad hearing them again).

At around the age of 2 ½ – 3 years old your toddler is beginning to recognize and produce rhyme through oral word play. They learn through rote, and imitation, to rhyme words and identify oral rhyming words using real and made-up nonsense words. They also enjoy alliteration (words that begin with the same sounds such as ‘Sammy snake slithers silently’) and repeated short phrases which they can anticipate in a story, or rhyme, which they can join in with; such as “I’ll huff and puff and blow your house down!” in the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’.

Pre-phonics – Phonological Awareness Stage 2 – (1 year – 2+ years)

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Your child will start to isolate individual words in a speech flow, engage in sound play and recognise that sentences are made up of individual words.

By about 18 months old your toddler’s receptive language* skills have grown to understanding anything from 200-500 words, with their understanding based on the simple phrases and words they hear a lot. So, the more you talk, repeat, show, model and explain to your child the greater the opportunities they have for extending and developing their receptive language skills.

As your child’s receptive language (ability to hear and understand words) develops so will their ability to isolate key words in a sentence. For instance, they will initially pick up on the word ‘biscuit’ when asked “Do you want a biscuit?” Word awareness allows them to focus on just the relevant information they are interested in.

Continue talking to your child as much as possible, but once they are about 10-12 months old reduce the use of ‘Parentese’ and instead use clearly pronounced, more simplified language patterns.

During this stage they are starting to respond to familiar requests such as “Come here!”; understand simple questions “Where is Daddy?”; follow simple instructions “Give the ball to Mummy!” and recognize and point to familiar objects when you ask them to.

For your child to reach these milestones in their speech, language and communication abilities they need to learn and develop their listening skills. Your child needs to learn how to pay attention – being able to focus on a particular sound/voice (filtering out other noises); they need to develop their stamina – concentrating on the sound/voice to take in the information; and they need to develop their comprehension – interpreting the sound/voice to extract meaning.

Although your child’s receptive language is developing well, their expressive language is far more limited, with them only being able to say around 20 words. The frustration of understanding but not being able to communicate leads to what is commonly known as ‘The Terrible Twos’. Sign language can be a very powerful tool to help you and your child to manage and lessen these communication frustrations.

Around the age of 2 years old many children use more than 50 single words and are beginning to put 2 or 3 words together to form short phrases and to ask simple questions “what that?” or “who that?”.  They are beginning to recognize that sentences are made up of individual words and are able to pick out more than one key word in a simple sentence such as “Put your shoes and coat on!”.

Helping your child to build their vocabulary (word awareness) and the meaning of these words is vital if your child is to continue to develop good communication skills. Talking, explaining, sharing and playing are all important as well as making sure that you pronounce words clearly and correctly for your child to hear. Your child will not have developed all the skills needed yet, to copy you accurately, but they will store the sound pattern information for later use.

Playing sound detection games is a fun way of helping your child to build their sensitivity to sounds as well as helping them to develop their listening and attention abilities.

Toddlers continue to engage in sound play as they keep on building their sound knowledge and ability to distinguish between environmental sounds and those of language. They will play with words to make up rhymes and nonsense words as a way of learning how to generate new sounds, rather than for expressing their thoughts and understanding.  It is a good gauge of your child’s sensitivity to sounds in words.

* Receptive language is how we take in and understand language; it is what we hear, see and read. This also includes body language and environmental clues. All these elements help us to interpret the situation and give meaning, so that we can understand what is needed or required of us. We do not need to be able to produce language to receive and understand it, so infants and toddlers understand far more than they can express (expressive language**).

Our understanding through receptive language enables us to communicate, socialize and comprehend instructions, different situations and scenarios.

** Expressive language is our ability to put our thoughts, needs and wants into words and sentences in a way that makes sense and is grammatically correct. A baby’s expressive language to begin with is based on cries and gestures moving to sound making, combined with gestures and their body language.

We use this expressive language when we speak and write. Even when babies and toddlers move to speaking words, they have a limited vocabulary which is why they can get frustrated when we do not understand them.

Pre-phonics Skills – Phonological awareness: Stage 1

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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.

Stage 1 – (Unborn – 1 year)

Your child will learn to recognize, differentiate and respond to both speech and non-speech sounds, start to recognize words and interpret facial expressions and body gestures. They will begin making sounds, mimic speech patterns and start to use body language to express their needs, wants and thoughts.

Research suggests that our phonological awareness begins in the womb at about 24 weeks. New born babies have a preference for their mother’s voice, as they have had an extended period of time hearing the voice before they are born, and so find it comforting. They do not understand the words, just the sound rhythm and intonation of her speech pattern; more like music.

It is suggested that reading, talking and singing to your unborn child in the same manner you would to a baby or toddler could help to begin the sound storage/recognition process. Like many parents who have their children close together (14 months in our case) the second child’s language skills seemed to develop earlier than the firsts. This may have been because the book sharing time with our first (who was about 5 months old when I fell pregnant again) and the type of language we were using stimulated our unborn second child.

So, talk to your baby even before they are born, they will not understand what you are saying but their brain is busy; starting to store sound information that will later help them to understand language and learning to speak.

Babies initially have no language preference; they respond only to the sounds and facial gestures and mouth shapes that accompany them.

Try to expose them to a greater range of sound experiences as they develop their awareness of sounds around them. The more they hear and the associations they make to those sounds (what they see, feel, experience) the greater their ability to distinguish between them. This skill becomes important later on as they begin to isolate individual words in sentences, being able to distinguish between words that sound similar such as dog and hog.

By 6 months old linguists can tell, by the cooing and babbling that your child is producing, what range of language you have shared with them through ‘Direct Talk’.  The cooing and babbling sound your baby or toddler make are their first steps towards expressive language, producing the sounds that eventually form words.

A baby who can talk through cooing and babbling is more likely to initiate and continue verbal interaction and play with you and others. The first cooing sounds represent more vowel sounds such as ah, ooh, eee, uh, ah-ee, while the later babbling stage is more consonant sounds repeated such as ba, ba, ba, da, da, da, ma, ma, ma, ga, ga, ga.

At about 7 months old your child is now recognizing words and developing an understanding of what these words mean (receptive language).

Talk to your baby, talk all the time, about what you are doing, what is going on and just about how wonderful and beautiful they are.

How you talk to your baby has an impact. Research has shown that babies prefer you to talk to them using regular words (normal adult vocabulary) in a slightly higher pitched and more sing-song way. Although many adults do this naturally when talking to babies it has become known as ‘Parentese’ and is very different from ‘Baby Talk’.

Parentese is:

● Slower speech pace

● Articulate clearly, well-formed, elongated vowel sounds and clearly voiced consonants, so ‘hello’ becomes ‘heellooo’

● Use shorter sentences that are grammatically correct

● Vary and raise pitch of voice (as much as an octave)

● Stress words by pitch, intensity and length so ‘sweet baby’ becomes ‘sweeet baybeee’

● Use exaggerated facial expressions (eye contact, raised eyebrows, big smiles)

● Frequently use repetition

● Leave a gap/pause between sentences so that your child can coo and babble back (developing the turn taking structure of conversation)

● Talk face to face so that they can clearly see how your lips move and other facial expressions (this about 20 cm or 8 inches for a new born)

● Try using your child’s name first then the important word in the sentence and follow with the complete sentence; for example, “Jo, bottle, here is your bottle!”  Research suggests that at about 3- 4 months old a baby will turn their head when their name is called and that they will then focus on the next word that follows their name.

Baby Talk

Is where we replace regular words with nonsense or over simplified words; so “who is the cutest baby in the world!” becomes “oo es da  cutsie wootsiest beebee in da wold!”.  This does not help a child to develop the language skills they need to communicate effectively with others and can delay some children’s speech and language development.  What you may think sounds cute and adorable may actually hold your child back because others just cannot understand them, which can be very frustrating for your child.

How the Body’s Sensory Systems affect Academic Success

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Sometime ago, I posted a blog with a link to an article which we felt highlighted, and backed, our own thoughts of why we need to look at the whole child and their physical and sensory development alongside their intellectual development.

It made very interesting reading then but having talked with different therapists, SENCos and teachers over the past year it seems that it has become very relevant. This is because it appears that more and more children are struggling in school and displaying learning difficulty traits that relate to sensory system difficulties.

This article explains how sensory systems impact on and affect a child’s ability to learn and are essential developmental building blocks to a child’s academic future. It also provides some practical advise.

The article ‘Sensory Systems that Make up the Learning Hierarchy of a Strong Academic Foundation’ was written and released by Integrated Learning Strategies Learning Corner on 24/02/16 http://ilslearningcorner.com/2016-02-sensory-systems-that-make-up-the-learning-hierarchy-of-a-strong-academic-foundation/

The Pre-phonics section of our website (http://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development.html ) explains how to support and develop all the visual and auditory sensory systems highlighted in the article for a strong foundation for learning.

The activity ideas work on providing a range of stimulus for a child to experience, supporting their visual and auditory development. These activity ideas can be played at home and easily built into or adapted in a school as cross curricular activity experiences.

Are your child’s #phonics skills good for their age?

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With more and more expected of our pre-school and 4 to 7 year old children it can be difficult to know what the realistic age appropriate skills are in relation to phonics.

In fact, phonics is only part of the story starting at stage 8 of a child’s phonological awareness development.

Stages 1 to 7 of a child’s phonological awareness, what we refer to as pre-phonics skills, are the continual development of their understanding and knowledge of our spoken language as well as other communication forms, such as gestures, facial expressions, body language and social conventions.

Stages 8 to 10 of a child’s phonological awareness, the phonics reading and writing stages are the continual development of their understanding and knowledge for learning to reading and write.

As a child’s phonological awareness skills build on each stage, the age at which a child reaches them varies making it difficult to know how your child is doing.

We recognise this variation and use age ranges as a rough guide to help you understand where your child is in their phonological awareness skills.

By clicking on the various stages of phonological awareness you will find appropriate age range information, advice and activities to support your child. Try not to jump a stage as each one is important in unlocking the knowledge and skills for the stage above.

Stages 1 to 7 (Pre-phonics skills): https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development.html

Stages 8 to 10 (Phonics): https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development-phonics.html