St John’s Church of England Primary School
Learning, Loving and Laughing Together
Letters and Sounds Phase 3
Children entering Phase 3 will know around 19 letters and be able to read and spell
Vowel Consonant (VC) words (e.g. if, it, in) and some CVC words (e.g. cat, can,
dig).
In Phase 3 children will learn another 25 graphemes (ways of recording a sound).
Most of these graphemes are diagraphs – 2 letters which make one sound e.g. goat,
chip. Children will also learn some trigraphs – 3 letters which make 1 sound e.g. light,
hear.
At the end of Phase 3 children will be able to represent each of about 42 phonemes
(sounds) by a grapheme (way of recording a sound).
Children will also continue to practise both blending words for reading (e.g. c-a-t =
cat) and segmenting words for spelling (e.g. cat = c-a-t) in this phase. They will also
begin to read and write short sentences and captions.
Finally, children will learn letter names during this phase, learn to read some more
high-frequency (common) words and also begin to learn to spell some of these
words.
New graphemes learnt:
j jam
v van
w win
x axe
y yes
z zip
zz buzz
ch chip
qu quit
ar farm
sh shop
or for
th
thin/then
ur hurt
ai rain
oi coin
ee feet
ng ring
igh night
ow cow
oa boat
oo boot
oo look
er corner
ure sure
ear dear
air fair
Letters and Sounds Phase 4
Within phase 4 no new graphemes are taught or learnt. The purpose of phase 4 is to
consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words
particularly words with adjacent consonants and words with multiple syllables.
For example blending for reading and segmenting for spelling: Splash, lamp, tent,
swim – ensuring children hear every sound. Commonly missed letters particularly in
spelling are adjacent consonants e.g. lamp (children will commonly write lap
instead), tent (children will commonly spell tet).
Some common consonant clusters to be covered in Phase 4(not a finite list):
'-ft' (loft left)
'-ld' (told gold)
'-lp' (gulp help)
‘-lk’ (bulk milk)
'-lt' (melt belt)
'-mp' (damp bump)
'-nd' (hand pond)
'-nk' (sink tank)
'-nt' (hunt bent paint burnt)
St John’s Church of England Primary School
Learning, Loving and Laughing Together
Letters and Sounds: Phase Five
'-sk' (desk risk)
'-st' (just nest chest roast)
'bl-' (blob black bleed )
'br-' (brick brown brush)
'cl-' (clap click clown)
'cr-' (crab crop creep crash)
'dr-' (drum dress droop)
'fl-' (flap flag float)
'fr-' (frog from frown fresh)
'gl-' (glad glum)
'gr-' (grin growl groan
green)
'pl-' (plan plus)
'pr-' (prod press prowl)
'sk-' (skim skin)
'sn-' (snug snip snoop)
'sp-' (speed sport spoon)
'st-' (step steep stood)
'sw-' (swam swing sweet)
'tr-' (trot trim train trail)
‘shr’ – (shrug shred)
‘thr’ – (thrill three)
'bl-' (blank blend blink)
'br-' (brisk brand)
'cl-' (clamp clump)
'cr-' (cramp crust)
'dr-' (drift drink)
'gr-' (grand grunt)
'pl-' (plump plank)
'pr-' (print prank)
'tr-' (tramp trunk)
'spr-' (spring sprint sprang)
'str-' (strong string)
'shr-‘ (shrimp shrink)
'-nch' (trench drench
crunch)
Some examples of multi-syllable words:
restless sandpit selfish shelter shampoo children windmill handbag dustbin softest lunchbox
helper sandwich pumpkin seventh melting toaster weekend munching
Some phonics games for Phase 3 and 4
Buried Treasure – reading and sorting words into real words (treasure) and made up words
(rubbish)
Bingo
Flash cards / speed read – how many graphemes or high frequency words can you read
in 1 minute?
Sentence substitution – Read a sentence (e.g. You can hear a goat.), give potential words
to substitute into the sentence (e.g. toad, see, coin) and change sentence (e.g. You can
see a goat. You can see a coin. Etc.)
Sound buttons / beans and sausages – putting dots (beans!) and dashes
(sausages!) under each phoneme (sound). Dots go under each sound
which is made up of just one letter (e.g. o, p, t, l), dashes under each diagraph (2 letters
making 1 sound e.g. ch, ee, oo) or trigraph (3 letters making 1 sound e.g. igh, air).
Box it up – as with sound buttons each sound goes in a new
box
farm
f
ar
m
Splash
s
p
l
a
sh
Silly Sentences or– reading and writing silly sentences
Yes / No questions - read and answer questions e.g. Is the rain wet? Will six cows fit in the
car?
Full Circle – make a word – change to another word – which letter do you need to
change? e.g. chip – chop – chap – champ – chimp – chip. Call full circle when you get
back to the original word!
What’s in the box? Pull out a picture or object from the box – what is it? Spell the word e.g.
fish, frog