Learning to read starts with sound, not letters, and that single idea shapes everything about how phonics is taught in Key Stage 1. KS1 phonics resources give Year 1 and Year 2 children the tools to decode words, from worksheets and sound mats to games and video demonstrations, all built around the UK National Curriculum’s systematic synthetic phonics approach. Get this stage right, and children carry the confidence into every other subject, because reading underpins the whole curriculum.
his guide walks through the six phases of the Letters and Sounds framework, what the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check actually involves, and how to support children who need extra help, including those learning English as an additional language. You’ll also find practical resources for the classroom and home, a glossary of terms that trip up new teachers and parents alike, and answers to the questions we hear most often. LearningMole, a UK educational platform founded by former primary school teacher Michelle Connolly, provides curriculum-aligned phonics videos and activities that sit alongside this guide.
Whether you’re a Year 1 teacher planning your next phonics session, a parent trying to make sense of the letters your child brings home in their book bag, or a teaching assistant supporting a small group, this article is built to answer the practical questions first and the background second. Look for the KS1 phonics activities and videos (https://learningmole.com/phonics-games-and-activities-for-early-years/) linked throughout for ready-to-use material.
Phonics teaches children to read by connecting sounds to letters, not by memorising whole words. In KS1, pupils learn to spot phonemes (individual sounds), blend them together to read, and segment them apart to spell. Once a child can do this reliably, they can decode almost any word they meet, rather than depending on a teacher or parent to tell them what it says.
England’s National Curriculum requires schools to teach reading through systematic synthetic phonics (SSP), meaning sounds are introduced in a fixed order, practised to fluency, and blended straight away rather than taught as isolated facts. The Department for Education expects every primary school to use a DfE-validated SSP programme, and Ofsted inspectors look specifically at how consistently a school delivers it. This is why phonics teaching looks broadly similar across UK schools, even though individual programmes vary in their materials and pacing.
“Children learn to read by learning sounds, not letters, and that distinction matters more than most people realise,” says Michelle Connolly, Founder of LearningMole and a former primary school teacher with over 15 years of classroom experience. “Once a child has secure sounds, blending becomes something they can do independently, in the classroom and at home.”
New phonics vocabulary can feel like a second language in itself. The table below lists the terms that appear most often in KS1 classrooms and school newsletters.
| Term | Meaning in Plain English |
|---|---|
| Phoneme | The smallest unit of sound in speech, such as /b/ in “bat” |
| Grapheme | The letter or group of letters that represents a phoneme in writing |
| Digraph | Two letters making one sound, such as “sh” in “shop” |
| Split digraph | Two letters making one sound but separated by another letter, such as “a-e” in “cake” |
| Blending | Pushing individual sounds together to read a word, for example,/c/ /a/ /t/ becomes “cat” |
| Segmenting | Breaking a word into its individual sounds for spelling |
| Tricky word | A word that does not follow regular phonics patterns and must be learned by sight, such as “said” |
| Pure sound | A phoneme spoken without an added “uh”, so “s” not “suh” |
Getting pure sounds right matters more than most people expect. If a child learns “m” as “muh”, blending “mat” becomes “muh-a-tuh” instead of “mat”, which makes the whole process harder rather than easier.
The Letters and Sounds framework organises phonics teaching into six phases, moving from listening skills in the Early Years through to spelling and grammar by the end of Year 2. Many schools now deliver these phases through DfE-validated commercial programmes rather than the original Letters and Sounds documents, but the phase structure and sequencing remain the shared reference point across the sector.
| Phase | Focus and Target Sounds | Typical Year Group |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Listening skills, rhythm, rhyme and oral blending, no letters yet | Nursery/Reception |
| Phase 2 | First 19 letter sounds (s, a, t, p, i, n and others), simple CVC words | Reception |
| Phase 3 | Remaining single letters plus digraphs (ch, sh, th, ng), around 25 new graphemes | Reception |
| Phase 4 | Adjacent consonants (blends like “st” and “nd”), no new graphemes | Reception/Year 1 |
| Phase 5 | Alternative spellings and pronunciations, such as “ai”, “ay” and “a-e” for the same sound | Year 1 |
| Phase 6 | Spelling rules, suffixes and grammar patterns | Year 2 |
Phase 1 involves no pencils at all. Children develop phonological awareness through environmental sounds, body percussion and rhyming games, learning to hear that words are built from separate sounds before they ever connect a sound to a letter shape.
Phase 2 introduces the first set of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, usually starting with s, a, t, p, i, n, because these letters combine into simple CVC words such as “sat”, “pin” and “tap” almost immediately. Multi-sensory teaching works well here: children form letters in sand or with magnetic tiles while saying the pure sound aloud. Our Phase 2 guide to the letter ‘s’ covers this stage in more depth, including common formation mistakes.
Phase 3 introduces the remaining single letters, plus the common digraphs ch, sh, th, and ng. Children typically meet around 25 new graphemes during this phase, which noticeably expands what they can read. This phase often runs for several months in Reception, and children begin reading and spelling early tricky words such as “the”, “was” and “said” alongside the regular patterns.
Phase 4 does not introduce new graphemes. Instead, it focuses on adjacent consonants, helping children read and spell words with consonant blends such as “stop”, “clap” and “hand”. This is a consolidation phase rather than a new-content phase, and it often gets less attention than it deserves.
Phase 5 introduces alternative spellings and pronunciations for sounds children already know, for example, recognising that “ai”, “ay” and the split digraph “a-e” can all represent the same sound. This phase spans Year 1 and continues into Year 2, and it is where reading starts to feel genuinely flexible rather than mechanical.
Phase 6, usually taught in Year 2, shifts the focus towards spelling accuracy, suffixes and early grammar patterns. By this point, most children are decoding fluently, and the teaching emphasis moves from “can they read the word” to “can they spell it correctly and use it well in writing”.
The National Curriculum expects children to apply phonics knowledge to decode words, read age-appropriate texts with increasing fluency, and spell most Year 1 and Year 2 common exception words by the end of KS1. A simple tracking grid noting which phase and which specific graphemes each child has secured makes it far easier to spot gaps early rather than at the end of the year, when catching up becomes harder for the child and more time-pressured for the teacher.
Two skills carry most of the weight in early KS1 reading: sounding out simple words, and instantly recognising the common words that don’t play by the rules.
CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant, such as “cat”, “pen” and “hot”) are the foundation of Phase 2 and 3 teaching. Starting with one vowel sound at a time, usually short “a” words like “bat”, “rat” and “mat”, keeps the pattern clear before moving on to “e”, “i”, “o” and “u”. Letter tiles or magnetic letters let children build the word physically, blend the sounds aloud, then check whether they’ve made something real.
Sound buttons help make blending visible: a dot under each letter in “dog” (d-o-g) gives children something to tap as they blend, and a line under two letters that make one sound, such as “sh” in “shop”, shows where a digraph behaves as a single unit.
Blending pushes separate sounds together to read a word; segmenting works the other way, breaking a word apart to spell it. Both need daily, low-pressure practice, moving gradually from oral games (saying sounds separately, then blending them by voice alone) to written work once the oral skill feels secure.
Tricky words don’t follow standard phonics rules, so children need to learn them as whole units rather than by sounding out every letter. The Year 1 National Curriculum list includes roughly 41 common exception words such as “said”, “they” and “because”, with Year 2 pupils adding words like “beautiful” and “pretty”. Highlighting just the irregular part of a word, for example, the “ai” in “said”, helps children remember what’s genuinely tricky rather than treating the whole word as unpredictable. Spaced, regular review works far better than a single intensive session, since children need to meet a tricky word many times before it moves into long-term memory.
The Phonics Screening Check is a statutory assessment for Year 1 pupils in England, usually taken over two weeks in June. Children read 40 words aloud to a teacher: 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words, sometimes called “alien words” because they’re often shown next to a picture of an alien to signal that the word isn’t real. The threshold mark has sat at 32 out of 40 in recent years, though schools should always check the current year’s published guidance, since exact figures can be updated. Children who don’t meet the threshold in Year 1 retake the check in Year 2.
The pseudo-word section exists specifically to test decoding rather than memory. A child who has memorised the shape of common words can appear to read fluently without actually being able to apply phonics knowledge to something unfamiliar; the alien words remove that shortcut, because no child has seen them before.
“Parents often worry when they hear their child will be asked to read made-up words,” says Michelle Connolly, Founder of LearningMole and a former primary school teacher with over 15 years of classroom experience. “It helps to explain that alien words are simply a fair test of decoding, not a trick, and that regular practice with nonsense words at home makes the check feel completely normal by the time June arrives.”
Practising with invented words little and often, rather than only in the weeks immediately before the check, removes most of the anxiety on both sides. Split digraphs (such as “a-e” in “make”), alternative spellings (such as “igh” and “ie” for the same sound) and consonant clusters (such as “scr” and “spl”) are worth particular attention, since these patterns appear regularly in the pseudo-word list.
A child who doesn’t meet the expected standard in Year 1 needs a specific, diagnosed plan in Year 2, not simply a repeat of the same teaching at the same pace. Start by identifying exactly which phase and which graphemes are insecure, since a Year 2 “resit” that treats phonics as one undifferentiated block wastes time on sounds the child already knows while under-teaching the ones causing the actual problem.
Short, frequent, targeted sessions tend to work better than longer catch-up lessons for children who found the Year 1 check stressful. Reassurance matters here as much as instruction: a child who associates phonics with failure needs to rebuild confidence alongside the specific skills gap, often through games and success-focused practice before returning to formal assessment-style tasks. Our guide to hands-on phonics activities using construction toys includes a nonsense-word-building activity designed specifically for this low-pressure, pseudo-word practice.
Children learning English as an additional language bring a different starting point to phonics, and clear, exaggerated pronunciation of English phonemes helps considerably, since some sounds simply don’t exist in every home language. Visual phonics cards, showing mouth shapes alongside graphemes, give EAL learners an anchor that doesn’t depend on already knowing spoken English vocabulary.
Structured phonics programmes generally work well for EAL pupils, starting with simple consonant-vowel combinations before layering in more complex patterns. Pairing phonics teaching with vocabulary support, rather than treating them as separate problems, tends to produce faster progress, since a child can often decode a word accurately without knowing what it means. Our EAL teaching resources for primary schools cover this in more depth, including dual-language approaches that work alongside phonics instruction.
Good KS1 phonics resources come in several formats, each suited to different moments in a lesson. Visual prompt frames give children an illustrated reference while they read. Word mats with high-frequency words help pupils spot common words at a glance. Decodable books matter particularly, since they use only letter-sound patterns a child has already been taught, letting them practise blending without encountering unfamiliar graphemes that break their confidence.
When choosing resources, match them to your school’s phonics programme sequence rather than a generic phase list, since the order in which sounds are introduced can vary slightly between DfE-validated schemes. Look for materials that offer multiple levels of challenge, since even a small group will include children at different points in the same phase. LearningMole provides curriculum-aligned phonics videos and printable activities, designed by an experienced primary teacher and built to sit alongside whatever systematic phonics programme a school already uses, rather than replace it.
Games turn repeated practice into something children actually want to do, which matters more in phonics than almost any other area of the curriculum, since fluency depends on volume of practice. Sound sorting, where children group objects or pictures by their initial or final sound, works well for both whole-class and small-group teaching. CVC matching games suit Phase 2 and 3 specifically, while partner activities, where children read flashcards to each other, build confidence through low-stakes repetition.
A simple “sound treasure hunt” works particularly well for home learning: give a child a target phoneme and ask them to find three objects around the house that start with that sound. This bridges classroom phonics into everyday life without needing any printed materials at all. Our phonics games and activities collection (https://learningmole.com/phonics-games-and-activities-for-early-years/) has further ideas organised by phase, including outdoor and hands-on options for children who find sitting still difficult.
For teachers, ready-made phonics materials save planning time that can go directly into working with the children who need the most support. LearningMole’s curriculum-aligned videos model pure sound production and letter formation clearly enough to use on an interactive whiteboard for whole-class teaching, or independently for a child revisiting a sound they found tricky.
For parents, the most useful home support doesn’t try to replicate the classroom. Short, regular sessions of 10 to 15 minutes, kept playful rather than test-like, reinforce what’s already being taught at school far more effectively than long, formal practice. Reading real books together, alongside the occasional decodable text matched to your child’s current phase, gives phonics knowledge a genuine purpose beyond the worksheet.
“Reading opens every other door in education,” says Michelle Connolly, Founder of LearningMole and a former primary school teacher with over 15 years of classroom experience. “When phonics teaching is systematic and engaging, children gain the confidence that carries them through their entire learning journey, well beyond Key Stage 1.”
LearningMole’s free phonics videos and activities are designed to support both classroom teaching and home learning, covering the full range of phases from first sounds through to Phase 6 spelling patterns.
The UK uses a six-phase system under the Letters and Sounds framework, moving from listening skills in Phase 1 through to spelling and grammar in Phase 6. Most children work through Phases 2 to 5 during Reception and Year 1, with Phase 6 typically taught in Year 2. Individual DfE-validated programmes may sequence the same content slightly differently, but the six-phase structure remains the common reference point.
Keep sessions short, usually 10 to 15 minutes, and focus on pure sounds rather than adding an “uh” to consonants. Play games that involve blending and segmenting aloud before moving to written work, and read real books together so your child sees phonics used for a genuine purpose. Consistency matters more than length, so a few minutes most days beats one long weekly session.
A split digraph is two letters that make one sound but are separated by another letter, such as the “a-e” pattern in “cake” or “make”. Children usually meet split digraphs in Phase 5, once they already know the single-letter and adjacent-digraph patterns from earlier phases.
Children who don’t reach the threshold in Year 1 retake the check at the end of Year 2. Schools typically provide targeted support during Year 2, focused on the specific phase or graphemes causing difficulty rather than repeating the whole programme. Ask your child’s teacher which sounds are still insecure so home practice can focus on the right areas.
There is no single “best” programme; what matters is that a school consistently delivers a DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics programme with fidelity. Parents supporting a child at home should follow the sequence their school uses rather than introducing a different programme’s order of sounds, since mixing sequences can cause confusion.
Alien words, or pseudo-words, are made-up words that follow real phonics patterns but have no meaning. They appear in the Phonics Screening Check to test whether a child can decode using phonics knowledge alone, rather than recognising a word from memory. Regular, relaxed practice with invented words removes most of the anxiety around this part of the check.
Phase 1 phonics, which focuses on listening and rhythm rather than letters, typically begins in Nursery. Formal grapheme teaching in Phase 2 usually starts in Reception, around age four to five, continuing through Year 1 and into Year 2 as children progress through the later phases.
Yes. LearningMole provides free phonics videos and printable activities covering all six phases for children aged 4 to 7, aligned with the systematic synthetic phonics approach used in UK schools. Always match any printable to your child’s or class’s current phase to keep the pattern consistent with the current lesson.
Phonics can feel like a maze of phases, terminology and screening checks, but the underlying idea stays simple throughout: children learn to read by connecting sounds to letters, practising that connection until it becomes automatic, and then applying it to increasingly complex words. Whether a child is just starting Phase 2 or preparing for the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check, the same principles hold: Clean, pure sounds, plenty of low-pressure blending practice, and materials matched to exactly where that child is right now.
Teachers juggling a full class at different phases and parents trying to make sense of book-bag letters are, in the end, working towards the same goal. Consistency between school and home, rather than either trying to do everything alone, tends to produce the most confident readers by the end of KS1. Small, regular moments of practice, whether a five-minute sound hunt around the house or a quick whiteboard blending drill, add up over a school year far more than occasional long sessions ever do.
Explore LearningMole’s free curriculum-aligned phonics videos and activities to support whichever phase your child or class is working through, from first sounds in Phase 1 right through to the spelling patterns of Phase 6.
Explore LearningMole’s phonics resources | Watch our free videos on YouTube
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