St Joseph's Catholic Primary School
Together as one family
Phonics
At St. Joseph’s, we use a scheme called 'Floppy's Phonics' to support the children to become readers and writers.
What is Floppy's Phonics?
Floppy's Phonics is a systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics. It is used in many schools in England. It is split into phases, from starting to learn about sounds at nursery to becoming fluent readers around age 7.
The phonic approach encourages us to directly link letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes). Children can then use these ‘phonemes’ and blend them together, or segment words to help them with their reading and writing.
Phase 1
Phase 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 phase is on listening to and repeating sounds, rather than on directly reading words.
Phase 2
Phase 2 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.
Set 1: s, a, t, p at, a, sat, pat, tap, sap, as
| Set 2: i – it, is, sit, pit, tip n – an, in, nip, pan, nap m – am, man, mat, map, Tim d – dad, and, sad, dim, Sid
| Set 3: g – tag, gag, sag, gas, pig o – got, on, not, top, dog c – can, cot, cop, cap, cod k – kid, kit, Kim, Ken
| Set 4: ck – kick, sack, dock, sick, pocket e – get, pet, ten, net, pen u – up, mum, run, mug, cup r – rip, ram, rat, rocket, carrot | Set 5: h – had, him, his, hot, hut b – but, big, back, bed, bus f, ff – of, if, off, fit, fog, puff
| Set 6: l, ll, le – let, leg, lot, bell, doll, little, bottle ss – less, hiss, mass, mess, boss
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| Tricky words: the, to, no, go, I, into | |||||
Phase 3
In Phase 3, children build on the letter-sound correspondences learned in Phase 2. They learn consonant digraphs (sounds made up of two letters together such as ‘ch’ or ‘ll’) and long vowel sounds (such as ‘igh’ or ‘ai’).
| Set 7: j – jet, jam, jog, Jan v – van, vet, velvet w – wig, will, web | Set 8: x – fox, box, six y – yes, yet, yell | Set 9: ch – chip, chat, rich | Set 10: sh – shop, shed, fish | Revise and Stretch: dge – bridge, fridge wh – where, when, what | Revise and Stretch: cks – blocks, bricks nk – pink, wink |
| Set 13: ai – rain, tail, aim ee – bee, leek, see igh – high, sigh, might | Set 14: oa – boat, toad, foal | Set 15: ur – hurt, fur, surf | Set 16: ow – cow, owl, town oi – coin, boil, oil ear – dear, shear, year | Set 17: er – dinner, summer, letter | Set 18: Revision of previously taught sounds (plus ue from Phase 5 to stretch able decoders). |
| Phase 3 tricky words: he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my, her | |||||
Phase 4
Children will consolidate their knowledge during this phase and they will learn to read and spell words which have adjacent consonants (for example, trap, strong, milk and crept).
Phase 4 tricky words: said, have, like, so, do, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what |
Phase 5
Children will learn some new graphemes for reading. They will also be taught alternative pronunciations for known graphemes. For example, they have already learned ow as in cow and will now learn ow as in blow.
In addition, they 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.
New graphemes for reading:
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Phase 5 tricky words: oh, their, people, Mr, Mrs, looked, called, asked, could | |||||||||||||||||
Phase 6
In Phase 6 children will read with increasing fluency. They will have learned most of the common letter-sound correspondences and can read familiar words automatically without needing to sound out and blend.
Children will work on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters, and so on.
