When children learn to talk, they pay attention to the meaning of the words they hear and say. They do not pay attention to the sounds within words. This is because human speech is a continuous stream of ever changing sound and the rate of change in a normal conversation is too fast to take notice of the specific sounds within the words.
When children come to learn to read and write, they have to learn how to turn their spoken language into written symbols. When learning via phonics, they have to listen carefuly to words until they are able to identify the sounds in them. Then they learn the corresponding symbols. These are called grapheme/phonemes correspondences, GPCs.
In 2007 the UK government published a free phonic programme for schools called Letters and Sounds. This programme split the teaching of phonics into 6 phases so that children experienced a systematic approach to learning letter/sound correspondences, GPCs.
Phonic Phase 1
This relates to children listening and speaking in such a way that they learn to identify the sounds in the words they hear and say.
Phonic Phase 2
Children are taught to identify the 19 most frequently used letters of the alphabet and a sound for each. This means that they learn the letter symbols and one corresponding sound for the small (lower case) letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u.
They are also taught to write the capital (upper case) letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U and that the sound of each capital (upper case) letter is the same as the sound of each small (lower case) letter. (We pronounce the symbols 'cat' and 'CAT' in the same way, whether they are written in lower case or upper case symbols.)
Children are also taught the names of the letters. These are not the same as the sounds of the letters and they are pronounced 'A ay, B bee, C see, D dee, E ee, F eff, G gee, H aitch, I eye, K kay, L ell, M em, N en, O oh, P pea, R are, S ess, T tee, U you.'
These letter names refer to both small letters and capital letters, so that the name of both A and a is pronounced 'ay'.
If we add in the fact that it is impossible to write any reading material without using the words 'the', 'I' and 'a', we see straight away that we have included more than one single sound/letter correspondence for each of the letters 't, h, e, i, a', because
't' in 'the' is not pronounced the same as 't' in 'cat',
'h' in 'the' is not pronounced the same as 'h' in 'hat',
'e' in 'the' is not pronounced the same as 'e' in 'red',
'i' in 'I' is not pronounced the same as 'i' in 'tin',
and the word 'a' is not pronounced the same way as 'a' in 'cat'.
To get around these problems Letters and Sounds introduces the words 'the, I, a' as 'common exception words' or high-frequency 'tricky' words. These are to be taught as whole words with specific spellings.
Children learn to remember these words visually, phonologically and meaningfully, so that they recognise these words 'by sight'.
Other common exception words to be taught in Phonic Phase 2 are 'no, go, to, into'. In these words there are two other sounds associated with the letter 'o', so that during Phonic Phase 2, children are taught that the letter 'o' corresponds to three different sounds, e.g. in the words 'hot, no, to'.
Other words to be taught in Phonic Phase 2 include 'as, is, his'. In these words the letter 's' is pronounced as /z/, so this is a second pronunciation of this letter. Even in the words 'cats' and 'dogs' we can hear the letter 's' is pronounced differently in each.
Phonic Phase 3
Phonic Phase 3 may be divided into three sections: letters, consonant digraphs and vowel graphemes.
In the first section, children are taught the letter/sound correspondences, GPCs, for the other letters of the alphabet: j, q, v, w, x, y, z and J, Q, V, W, X, Y, Z as well as the names of these letters pronounced 'J jay, Q queue, V vee, W double you, X ex, Y why, Z zed'.
In the second section children are taught about consonant digraphs . (Digraphs are two letters written next to each other that represent one sound.) The consonant digraph phoneme/grapheme correspondences (GPCs) taught in Phonic Phase 3 (2007) are:
/ck/ as in duck, /th/ as in them, /th/ as in thin, /sh/ as in ship, /ch/ as in chat, /ng/ as in ring.
The third section introduces children to vowel graphemes. Some of the graphemes are digraphs and some of the graphemes are trigraphs, i.e. three letters representing one sound.
The digraph GPCs children are taught in this phase are:
/ai/ as in sail, /ee/ as in sheep, /oa/ as in boat, /oo/ as in moon, /oo/ as in look, /ar/ as in yard, /er/ as in pepper, /or/ as in storm, /ur/ as in turn, /ow/ as in down, /oi/ as in boil,
The trigraph GPCs taught in this phase are:
/igh/ as in night, /air/ as in hair /ear/ as in year /ure/ as in cure.
Phonic Phase 4
This phase relates to the clusters of consonants at the beginning of English words: e.g. 'bl, fl, cr, pr, sp, st' in words like 'blog, flag, crab, pram, spot, stop', and the clusters of consonants at the end of English words: e.g. 'mp, nd, st, nt, sk' in the words like 'jump, hand, fast, tent, ask'.
We have found it impossible to write the stories in Jelly and Bean books without using clusters of adjacent consonants almost from the start.
Phonic Phase 5
The phonic content of Phase 5 was originally intended to be taught to children in Year 1. They were to be taught two important facts about the written English language.
1. There are many ways to spell the 44 phonemes, e.g. the sound /oa/ has different spellings in 'boat, show, gold, toe', the sound /ie/ has different spellings in 'find, night, fly, time, cried' and the sound /k/ has different spellings in 'kitten, cat, chemist, cheque, luck'.
2. There are many ways to pronounce both the single letters of the alphabet and the written combinations of digraphs seen on a page, e.g. 'a' is pronounced differently in the words 'cat, lady, father, fall, was', and 'ea' is pronounced differently in 'bean, bread, steak, create'.
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National Curriculum
However, in 2014 the phonic content of Letters and Sounds (2007) was included in the National Curriculum for Year 1 and it was made statutory.
The revision of the phonics taught in the Reception Year has been included in the statutory requirements. However, there is no specific order of teaching the GPCs.
After this basic revision, the statutory requirements for Year 1 are:
- the graphemes 'ff, ll, ss, zz, ck, nk, tch', and 'v' as in 'live, have, give'
- the plurals 's' and 'es' of nouns and third person singular verbs
- the adding of word endings 'ing, ed, er, est' where there is no change in the root word
- and a list of vowel digraphs and trigraphs to be learnt as spellings.
These spellings are:
'ai' as in 'rain, 'oi' as in 'oil'
'ay' as in 'play', 'oy' as in 'boy'
'a-e' as in 'made, 'e-e' as in 'these, 'i-e' as in 'five', 'o-e' as in 'home', 'u-e' as in 'June' and 'use'.
'ar' as in 'star', 'ir' as in 'girl', 'ur' as in 'turn'
'ee' as in 'tree', 'ea' as in 'dream', 'ea' as in 'bread'
'er' as in 'term' (stressed sound), 'er' as in 'summer' (unstressed schwa sound)
'or' as in 'short', 'ore' as in 'more'
'oa' as in 'road, 'oe' as in 'goes', 'ow' as in 'snow'
'oo' as in 'good', 'oo' as in 'zoo'
'ou' as in 'about', 'ow' as in 'town'
'ue' as in 'blue, rescue', 'ew' as in 'flew, new'
'ie' as in 'cried', 'ie' as in 'field'
'igh' as in 'night', ('y' as in 'fly' is not mentioned, but it is not a digraph)
'aw' as in 'saw', 'au' as in 'author'
'air' as in 'fair', 'are' as in 'care'
'ear' as in 'near', 'ear' as in 'pear'
'y' as a word ending in 'very, happy'
'ph' as in 'dolphin', 'wh' as in 'when'
The vocabulary and progression in the Jelly and Bean reading books ensures that all these statutory requirements are met.
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In 2022 the government withdrew Letters and Sounds as a teaching programme. Teaching programmes are now provided by commercial companies. Jelly and Bean books are not a teaching programme, but the books may be used as extra reading resources to complement these programmes.
Children who are struggling to learn to read are successful with Jelly and Bean books and become motivated to learn more. Our books have been used in this field for 25 years.
Jelly and Bean Ltd
56 Almsford Drive
Harrogate
HG2 8EE
