To understand how to teach the Letters and Sounds Phase 3 Programme.

Reception Teachers and TAs

or those practitioners supporting intervention groups in KS1/KS2

In Phase 3 children learn the remaining, more difficult and/or less commonly used phonemes. There are around 25 of these, depending on which scheme is followed, mainly made up of two letters such as /ch/, /ar/, /ow/ and /ee/.

Alongside this, children are taught to recognise more tricky words, including ‘me,’ ‘was,’ ‘my,’ ‘you’ and ‘they’. They learn the names of the letters, as well as the sounds they make. Activities might include learning mnemonics (memory aids) for tricky words, songs like the Alphabet Song and Vowel song.

By the end, they should be able to say the sound made by most, or all, Phase 2 and 3 graphemes, blend and read CVC words made from these graphemes, read 12 new tricky words and write letters correctly when given an example to copy.

Clare Shivnan-Taylor – SLE /Phonics Lead Bury LA