Phonics games

Schools in England teach reading with systematic synthetic phonics. Children learn the sounds of English (phonemes) and the letters that write them (graphemes), then blend the sounds together to read a word, and split a word into its sounds to spell it.

Each school follows a phonics programme, most of them validated by the Department for Education, such as Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Many parents know the phases from Letters and Sounds, which these games follow. Phase 2 brings single letters like s, a, t and p early in Reception. Phase 3 adds the rest of the alphabet and sounds written with two or three letters, like sh, ai and igh. Phase 4 is words with consonants side by side, like frog and milk. Phase 5, in Year 1, teaches new ways to write sounds children already know, like ay and a_e.

In June of Year 1, children take the phonics screening check: they read 40 words aloud to their teacher, some of them made-up words, to show they can sound out a word they have never seen before. Children who don’t reach the expected standard take it again in Year 2.