Phase 5
Phase 5 generally takes children the whole of Year 1. Children learn new graphemes (different ways of spelling each sound) and alternative pronunciations for these: for example, learning that the grapheme ‘ow’ makes a different sound in ‘snow’ and ‘cow’.
They should become quicker at blending, and start to do it silently.
They learn about split digraphs (the ‘magic e’) such as the a-e in ‘name.’ They’ll start to choose the right graphemes when spelling, and will learn more tricky words, including ‘people,’ ‘water’ and ‘friend’. They also learn one new phoneme: /zh/, as in ‘treasure.’
By the end of Year 1, children should be able to:
- Say the sound for any grapheme they are shown
- Write the common graphemes for any given sound (e.g. ‘e,’ ‘ee,’ ‘ie,’ ‘ea’)
- Use their phonics knowledge to read and spell unfamiliar words of up to three syllables
- Read all of the 100 high-frequency words, and be able to spell most of them
- Form letters correctly
At the end of Year 1, all children are given a Phonics Screening Check to ensure they have mastered the appropriate knowledge.
