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Phase 1

Children start their phonics journey at St John's by following Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds  which concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the future phonic work that we do through Read Write Inc. 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. 

Phase 1 activities are divided into seven aspects. Next to each video there are examples of how sessions are taught. Each aspect takes us 2-3 weeks to teach.

•  environmental sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vAk0EGVoYQ
•  instrumental sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myT1yvmrAU4
• body sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDETXXp9_h8
• rhythm and rhyme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvSBDVoZD5Y
• alliteration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us35cqDRnfU
• voice sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOmndXPQ08U
• oral blending and segmenting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv4E_D9t2jU

Each aspect contains three strands:

1. Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrmination)
2. Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing)
3. Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension).

Although this all sounds very serious, in reality we play lots of fun games.

Here is the Letters and Sounds guidance that we follow for Phase 1:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190599/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf

Read Write Inc

We follow the Read Write Inc Scheme once we complete Letters and Sounds Phase 1. However, we continuously practise activities from Letters and Sounds Phase 1 to develop the children's speaking and listening skills.

We begin our letter sound journey with the Set 1 Speed Sounds:

Learning Set 1 Sounds

These are the Set 1 Speed Sounds written with one letter: 

m  a  s  d  t  i  n  p  g  o  c  k  u  b  f  e  l  h  r  j  v  y  w  z  x

These are the sounds written with two letters (your child will call these ‘special friends’):

sh  th  ch  qu  ng  nk  ck

Check if your child can read these sounds. Make sure they say sounds like ‘mmm’, not letter names like ‘em’. Watch the Sound Pronunciation Guide video to help you.