Language, Literacy and Communication
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