Phase 2 – Autumn 1

Phase 2 begins at the start of Reception in September.

The Structure of a Lesson

During the phase two phonics lessons, children are taught how to pronounce phonemes and form the graphemes, as well as practise how to recognise the phoneme at the beginning or the end of a word. At the end of these lessons, children practise the skill of oral blending, which ensures children can tune into phonemes in isolation and blend phonemes together to hear/say a word. For example, c-a-t makes ‘cat’ and d-u-ck makes ‘duck’.

After the first week of phase two, children begin to learn how to blend phonemes together to read a word. This is the next building block from oral blending that helps children to become more independent with reading CVC words. Oral blending and blending to read words are skills that are taught and learnt alongside each other. When we teach blending, it starts with using large grapheme cards alongside an adult before moving children on to reading words more independently using word cards.

Towards the end of the first half term, children are exposed to three tricky words. Children learn to quickly recognise these words and become familiar with the part of the word that is ‘tricky’ e.g. ‘the’ – we can sound out the /th/ sound and the ‘e’ grapheme is the ‘tricky’ part.

As we progress through phase 2, children are taught grapheme-phoneme correspondences that contain two letters called ‘digraphs’. These are taught after the October half term holidays.

Children become familiar with the concept that a digraph is a grapheme that includes two letters that make one sound, such as ‘ch’ and ‘sh’.

When children are taught digraphs, they learn mnemonics to make them more memorable. These mnemonics are also accompanied with an image that children can refer to when trying to recall the digraphs. As children move towards the end of phase two, children are expected to be able to apply their knowledge of taught GPCs to help them read a phonically decodable sentence and write two or three words that include phonemes that they have already learnt.

As phase two progresses, children also widen their bank of tricky words.

Phase 2 – Autumn 2

As we progress through phase 2, children are taught grapheme-phoneme correspondences that contain two letters called ‘digraphs’ as outlined below.

Week 1: ff ll ss j

Week 2: v w x y

Week 3: z zz qu ch

Week 4: sh th ng nk

Week 5: words ending with the ‘-s’ for plurals

Children become familiar with the concept that a digraph is a grapheme that includes two letters that make one sound, such as ‘ch’ and ‘sh’.

When children are taught digraphs, they learn mnemonics to make them memorable. These mnemonics are also accompanied with an image that children can refer to when trying to recall the digraphs. As children move towards the end of phase two, children are expected to be able to apply their knowledge of taught GPCs to help them read a phonically decodable sentence and write two or three words that includes sounds that they have already learnt.

Throughout Phase 2 Autumn 2, children widen their bank of tricky words and learn the following:

Week 1: put pull full as

Week 2: and has his her

Week 3: go no to into

Week 4: she push he of

Week 5: we me be