What is phonics?

'Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English Language.' National Literacy Trust 2021

How is phonics taught at Kingsholm?

We use Unlocking Letters and Sounds, which was validated by the DfE in December 2021. We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and continue until children have mastered the phonetic code, usually in year 2.

Phonics Terminolgy

These are some of the terminolgy you might hear about from your child's phonics learning.

Phoneme - is the smallest unit of sound. The word cat for example has three phonemes c-a-t, and the word chair has two phonemes ch-air.

Grapheme - is the written form of a phoneme.

Digraph - is two letters that together make one sound. There are consonant digraphs like 'sh' and 'th' and there are vowel digraphs like 'ai' and 'oi'. 

Trigraph - is three letters that together make one sound such as 'igh' and 'ear'.

Split Digraphs - is when a digraph has been split and a consonant has been put in the middle of the two letters. there are five of these to learn. They are 'a_e', 'e_e', 'i_e', 'o_e' and 'u_e'.

Common Exception Words - these are words which do not follow the phonics rules, at the point in which they are taught, and therefore are not decodable. 

	Phase 3 Actions and Images	[pdf 1MB]
	Phase 2 Actions, Images and Handwriting	[pdf 1MB]