Phonics and Early Reading

Phonics is taught throughout Early Years and Key Stage 1.  We currently follow the scheme ‘Floppy’s Phonics’.  Staff have all been fully trained with delivering this scheme of work. 

What is Floppy’s Phonics?

Floppy’s Phonics is a systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics. It is split into five levels, from starting to learn about sounds at nursery to becoming fluent readers around age 7.  Children read books that are fuly matched to the scheme and systematic assessment is carried out to ensure that all children progress through the scheme. 

The phonic approach encourages us to directly link letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes).

How do children learn to read using Floppy’s Phonics?

Level 1

Approx age: 3–4 | Nursery/Reception
Level 1 supports children’s developing speaking and listening skills and linking of sounds and letters. Activities are divided into seven groups:

• Environmental sounds.
• Instrumental sounds.
• Body percussion.
• Rhythm and rhyme.
• Alliteration.
• Voice sounds.
• Oral blending and segmenting.

Children should be encouraged to enjoy books from as early an age as possible. However, the focus of this level is on listening to and repeating sounds, rather than on directly reading words. This level is assumed to have been covered when children join in Reception.

Level 1+

Approx age: 4–5 | First term of Reception
Level 1+ introduces simple letter-sound correspondences. As each set of letters is introduced, children are encouraged to use their new knowledge to sound out and blend words. For example, they will learn to blend the sounds s–a–t to make the word sat.

Sounds taught at this level

s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, le, ss

Level 2

Approx. age: 4–5 | Reception
In Level 2, children build on the letter-sound correspondences learned in Level 1+. They learn consonant digraphs (sounds made up of two letters together such as ‘ch’ or ‘th’).

Sounds taught at this level

j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, dge, ve, wh, cks, tch, nk

Level 3

Approx. age: 4–5 | Reception

In Level 3, children will learn long vowel sounds (such as ‘igh’ or ‘ai’). They will continue to work on their segmenting and blending skills and develop their reading fluency. They will begin to read some simple words encountered during Level 1+ by sight.

Sounds taught at this level

ai, ee, y /ee/, igh, y/igh/ oa, oo (book/look), ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, er /u/, er /ur/, ue /yoo/, ue /oo/, ure /yoor/, ture /chu/

Level 4

Approx. age: 5-6 | Year 1
Children will consolidate their knowledge during this level and will revise reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants (for example, trap, strong, milk and crept). Children will learn some new graphemes for reading (for example, they have already learned grapheme ai as in rain and will now learn ay as in day).

Sounds taught at this level

Level 5

Approx. age: 5–6 | Year 1
During this level, children will learn alternative spellings for known phonemes. For example, the sound /igh/ has been learned as the grapheme igh as in ‘night’, but can also be spelled y, ie, and i-e.

Alternative Spellings taught

Helpful Words

Throughout the levels, children will be introduced to ‘helpful words’. These are common or high-frequency words which are useful for early reading and writing that include letter/s-sound correspondences that are unusual or simply have not yet been taught through the phonics programme.