Phonics Skills and Progression Map
Concept	Phase One	Phase Two	Phase Three	Phase Four	Phase Five	Phase Six
Overview	Phase One of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. They will follow 7 aspects. Within each aspect’s children learn to: Tune into sounds (auditory discrimination) Listen to and remember sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) Talk about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension)	In Phase Two, letters and their sounds are introduced one at a time. A set of letters is taught each week in a set sequence. The children will begin to learn to blend and segment to begin reading and spelling. This will begin with simple words (VC and CVC)	By the time they reach Phase Three, children will already be able to blend and segment words containing the 19 letters taught in Phase Two Over the twelve weeks which Phase Three is expected to last, twenty-five new graphemes are introduced (one at a time)	By Phase Four, children will be able to represent each of 42 phonemes with a grapheme. They will blend phonemes to read CVC words and segment CVC words for spelling. They will also be able to read two syllable words that are simple. They will be able to read all the tricky words learnt so far and will be able to spell some of them. This phase consolidates all the children have learnt in the previous phases. By this point children would be expected to be reading CVC words at speed along with the tricky words from the previous phases. It is important that children are taught that blending is only used when a word is unfamiliar.	Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these graphemes and graphemes they already know. They will begin to learn to choose the appropriate grapheme when spelling. The children will be automatically decoding a large number of words for reading by this point. By this phase children should be reading words fluently and no longer be blending and segmenting familiar words. The real focus throughout the phase is to not only learn the new graphemes for reading but also to learn to read words with alternative pronunciations. Children will also learn alternative spellings for each phoneme.	At this stage children should be able to spell words phonemically although not always correctly. In Phase Six the main aim is for children to become more fluent readers and more accurate spellers. They will be able to read many familiar words automatically. When they come across unfamiliar words, they will in many cases be able to decode them quickly and quietly using their well-developed sounding and blending skills. With more complex unfamiliar words they will often be able to decode them by sounding them out. Suffixes will be introduced as well as basic grammar strategies
New sounds learnt	Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental sounds Aspect 2: General sound discrimination –	Set 1: s, a, t, p Set 2: i, n, m, d Set 3: g, o, c, k Set 4: ck, e, u, r Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss	Set 6: j, v, w, x Set 7: y, z, zz, qu Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng	No new sounds learnt. Consolidation of knowledge to help children learn to read and spell words with	ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, ey, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e Alternative pronunciations for	Suffixes: s, es, ing, ed, er, est, y, en, ful, ly, ment, ness