I return now to what children will be learning in school – in the Reception Year and beyond
The Initial Code and The Extended Code
For two to three years, children will learn all main the phonic patterns in the English language for reading and spelling. There are many sounds in the English Spoken Language and many ways to represent them. Single letters represent simple sounds such as ‘m’ or ‘s’ and letters combine in different ways to create new and different sounds. In Reception Year your child will learn the initial sounds, blends (combinations such as cl, br,-nd, mp) and ‘digraphs’ such as ch, sh, ng and th where two letters combine to form a new sound. These are practised so that the child should recognise them for reading and be able to reproduce the sounds for spelling, in a recognisable phonic form.
Over the following two years. they will learn the Extended Code which means all the other main letter combinations, and these are mostly vowel combinations. Many sounds in English can be written in a variety of ways. I describe some of these below.
Words are read by breaking down the sounds and blending them together. Reading books usually follow this pattern so that all words can be sounded out, in line with the phonic stage of learning.
Alongside this, ‘tricky’ or ‘exception’ words are learnt by memory as they cannot be sounded out. Words like ‘the’, ‘I’ and ‘was’ are examples of tricky words.
Here are some examples of the Extended Code after the basic sounds have been learnt.
The ‘A’ sound can be represented / written in various ways:-
ai (rain), ay(play), a (baby), a-e (make), ey (they), ea (break), ei (weight).
The ‘oo’ sound can be written as oo, ue, ew and so on.
‘Or’ can be written or, aw, au and so on.
In June of Year One, children will have a phonic screening check. This involves reading 20 phonic words which are not real words but use the phonic patterns the child has been taught as well as 20 real words that use the patterns. Examples of the first are ‘jub’ and ‘blorn’ and examples of the second would be ‘dart’ or ‘groans’. The lists change each year but the same kind of phonic patterns are used.