Letters and sounds

We work through Phase 1 to Phase 3 in Buds class. Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. 

Phase 1

Aspect 1 – General sound discrimination – environmental

Aspect 2 – General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds

Aspect 3 – General sound discrimination – body percussion

Aspect 4 – Rhythm and rhyme

Aspect 5 – Alliteration

Aspect 6 – Voice sounds

Aspect 7 – Oral blending and segmenting

Phase 2 and 3

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet which make 44 different sounds called phonemes.

A Phoneme is the spoken sound.

A Grapheme is  written symbol which represents the phoneme.

Graphemes can either be a single letter or a group of letters such as:

• one letter grapheme - i ,o, s , h
• two letters (Digraph) - ch, sh, qu
• three letters (trigraph) - ear, air, igh

We teach phonemes and corresponding graphemes is the following sequence.

Phase 2 Sounds

Set 1: s, a, t, p
Set 2: i, n, m, d
Set 3: g, o, c, k
Set 4: ck, e, u, r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

Phase 3 Sounds

Set 6: j, v, w, x

Set 7: y, z, zz, qu

Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng

Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er