Phase 5

Phase 5 is taught throughout the year in Year 1.

The Structure of a Lesson

During phase five, at the beginning of the phonics lessons, children review the GPCs that they have already been taught and practise reading words that include the taught GPCs. Children also recap taught tricky words too. This part of the lesson promotes reading known familiar words with fluency.

In the teach part of the lesson, children are taught a new GPC and a word that accompanies the GPC that makes it memorable for the children. When the children have been taught the GPC, children practise orally blending phonemes together that include the new GPC using the ‘copy me’ approach. This approach includes the teacher segmenting a word such as ‘a-nn-oy’ and the children copying the teacher’s segmenting and then blending the phonemes together to say the word.

Building upon the oral blending, children are taught how to read words that include the new GPC, using word cards. The teacher models how to read a word through sound talking the phonemes and then blending them together to read the word accurately. Then the children use the ‘copy me’ approach to have a go themselves. Children are then required to read other words that include the same GPC independently, using different response voices. When reading new words, the teacher provides definitions for words that children may not be familiar with, such as ‘prize’ meaning ‘something you get for winning’.

Towards the end of the lesson, children are asked to apply their knowledge of the new GPC to read a sentence, with support from the teacher. This part of the lesson requires children to become ‘grapheme spotters’, meaning children need to spot digraphs that are included in the sentence. After reading the sentence with support from the teacher, children are asked to read the sentence independently in different response voices.

At the end of the lesson, children practise the skill of segmenting to help them write two or three words that only include GPCs that they have been taught. As a challenge, some children may be asked to write the sentence they practiced reading as a whole class independently.

Grow the Code

During phase five, the children learn to use the ‘Grow the code’ chart. At the beginning of the lesson, the children are asked to write as many ways of representing the phoneme as they can. For example, the teacher may ask, ‘Can you write as many graphemes as you can that represent the phoneme /oa/?’. Children then practise identifying the phoneme for the different graphemes, recognising that ‘oa’, ‘o’, ‘o-e’ and ‘ou’ all make the same sound.

After the children have completed the above, they are asked to look at different words that include the same phoneme that are represented with different graphemes, and the children practise identifying where the grapheme comes in the word – beginning, middle or end. Children then practise segmenting and blending the words and then follow this up with reading the words fluently.