Letters and Sounds
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Letters and Sounds was launched by the Department for Education and Skills in June 2007, following an independent review into the teaching of reading. It details a rigorous "high quality" phonics teaching programme which is aimed at rasining standards so that all children can read fluently by the age of seven (end of Key Stage 1).
The programme is intended to help children learn letters and sounds for reading and spelling, starting with developing their speaking and listening skills as a preparation for learning to read. When teachers judge that the child is ready, usually around age five, the phonics teaching programme is introduced, with children learning letter sounds, blending and segmenting while continuing to develop their speaking and listening abilities.
Video showing how to pronounce the sounds
The 'sh' digraph
How it works
As part of the Letters and Sounds phonics teaching programme, children are taught letter sounds, rather than the names of the letters. Once they have learnt some basic sounds, they will learn graphemes such as sh, th, ee and oo.
As soon as they have learnt just a few letter sounds, they will start learning how to blend and sement the sounds. Blending sounds is a skill used in reading words. For example, seeing the word cat, the child will say the sounds c-a-t and blend them together to make the word cat. Segmenting is a skill used in spelling. In order to spell the word cat, it is necessary to segment the word into its constituent sounds; c-a-t.
The official guide book
Free Letters and Sounds resources
Find out more about Letters and Sounds
- Letters and Sounds Resources
Free resources to help teachers and parents using the Letters and Sounds phonics programme. - Phonics games
Links to the best free online phonics games which can help your child to develop their phonics skills and knowledge of letter sounds. - Letters and Sounds - The Standards Site
This is the place to get all the detailed information on the Letters and Sounds phonics programme. You can download detailed guides and watch videos showing how it is implemented in classrooms. - Primary Classroom Resources
On this site, as well as downloading resources, you can also order sets of printed and laminated resources, a timesaver for busy teachers.
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Thanks for your comment katyzz. It makes sense to me - the alphabet is a code and when you learn the skills to crack the code you can read anything! Whole words might get them off to a quick start but it can be a false start if kids think they can read but then realise that they can't at a later stage.
Good information here. My children are beginning to learn phonics in their enrichment classes and they can pronounce so much better than their parents because we didn't get to learn phonics when we were young. P.S. We are from singapore.
An interesting Hub. Pat knows a little boy aged 5 who didn't speak until well after his 3rd birthday. When he started school this was the preferred teaching method. The boy will be 6 in a couple of months and is already a fluent reader. We are impressed.
katyzzz Level 4 Commenter 2 years ago
great post, some common sense at last, no-one I knew ever had trouble learning to read, we used to sound it out, just as this program indicates, then some "theoro" pushed the idea of learning whole words by recognition, skills went out the door and down the drain, so much for academia.