Letters and Sounds games and activities

Before letters are introduced, these activities are designed to promote speaking and listening skills and phonological awareness (ability to hear sounds within words). This provides children with a good foundation for later reading and writing.

These activities are important for getting children off to a good start in reading and writing - the more words children know and understand before they start on a systematic phonics programme, the better equipped they are to succeed.

A range of high quality games and activities to inspire children who are learning to read with phonics. Further activities to support your child at each stage of their development can be found in the Letters and Sounds resources sections.

These resources have been specifically designed to support teaching Phase Two of the Letters and Sounds programme used in many schools (normally Reception Year).
They can be used very effectively with any phonic reading programme.

Children are taught the first 19 phonemes (letter-sounds) and begin to read and spell simple words using them. They will also start to learn some high-frequency 'tricky' words.

Phonemes taught in Phase Two :
s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f,ff, l,ll, ss

These resources have been specifically designed to support teaching Phase Three of the Letters and Sounds programme used in many schools (normally Reception Year).
They can be used very effectively with any phonic reading programme.

Children are taught another 25 phonemes, most of them comprising two letters, and continue to practise reading and spelling simple words.

Phonemes taught in Phase Three :
j, v, w, x, y, z,zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

These resources have been specifically designed to support teaching Phase Four of the Letters and Sounds programme used in many schools (normally Reception Year).
They can be used very effectively with any phonic reading programme.

Children practise the letters and sounds they have previously learnt, and move on to words with adjacent consonants (such as 'tr' 'gl' etc.) and words with more than one syllable.

These resources have been specifically designed to support teaching Phase Five of the Letters and Sounds programme used in many schools (normally Year One).
They can be used very effectively with any phonic reading programme.

Children learn new ways of representing the sounds, and practise blending for reading and segmenting for spelling.

Representations taught in Phase Five :
ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue(long oo), ue(yoo), aw, wh(wheel), wh(whole), ph, ew(screw), ew(stew), oe, au, ey, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e(flute), u-e(yoo), + new sound - zh(treasure)

These resources have been specifically designed to support teaching Phase Six of the Letters and Sounds programme used in many schools (normally Year Two).
They can be used very effectively with any phonic reading programme.

Children move on to become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.