The purpose of this phase is to:
- Teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat
- Practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light
- Learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly
- Read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them
- Read and write words in phrases and sentences.
CVC words containing graphemes made of two or more letters
Here are some examples of words your children will be reading: tail, week, right, soap, food, park,burn, cord, town, soil
Ways you can support your children at home
- Sing an alphabet song together.
- Play ‘I spy’, using letter names as well as sounds.
- Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some of the two grapheme (letter) combinations:
r-ai-n = rain blending for reading rain = r-ai-n – segmenting for spelling
b-oa-t = boat blending for reading boat = b-oa-t – segmenting for spelling
h-ur-t = hurt blending for reading hurt = h-ur-t – segmenting for spelling
- Praise your child for trying out words.
- Ask teachers for a list of the tricky words.
- Set a timer. Call out one word at a time and get your child to spell it on a magic board or a small whiteboard, against the timer – remember they can use magnetic letters.
- Play ‘Pairs’, turning over two words at a time trying to find a matching pair. This is especially helpful with the tricky words: the the, to to, no no, go go, I I
- Don’t worry if they get some wrong! These are hard to remember – they need plenty of practice.
