Class 1 Phonics (Guide)

Words are made up of just 44 sounds in English. You may have heard your child use particular  words that form the core understanding of phonics. Here's a quick explanation of some of the key concepts. 

• Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound as it is spoken. such as ‘a’
• Grapheme -  a written symbol that represents a sound (phoneme) that's either one letter or a sequence of letters
• Digraph - two letters that work together to make the same sound (ch, sh, ph)
• Trigraph - three letters that work together to make the same sound (igh, ore, ear)

Digraph- Two letters which make one sound

A consonant digraph contains two consonants next to each other, but they make a single sound.  e.g sh,ck,th,ll                                                                                                                               A vowel digraph contains at least one vowel but the two letters still make a single sound e.g. ai,ee,ar,oy 

Examples of consonants digraphs 

Examples of vowel digraphs

Sound buttons are circles or spots that can be written underneath a sound to support reading. When you touch the sound button you then practice saying the sound aloud.

Blending                                                                                                                            Recognizing the letter sounds in a written word, for example, c-u-p, and blending them in order which they are written, to read the word cup. 

Trigraph- Three letters, which make one sound 

Follow this link for the pronunciation of phase 2, and phase 3 phonemes an digraphs 

https://youtu.be/-ksblMiliA8

Phase 2 

Learning which letter makes which sound

Phase 3 

Phase 4  

Phase 5