Early Years News

The Early Years

All students in Kindergarten to Year Two at Salvado Catholic College participate in small group phonics instruction sessions through the Letters and Sounds Program.

Letters and Sounds is a structured, synthetic phonics program that effectively targets the development of oral language, reading, spelling and written expression in the early years. It aligns with the achievement standards outlined in the West Australian Curriculum (English) and has been shown to significantly improve whole-school literacy outcomes.

There are 26 letters in the alphabet and these letters, either singularly or in combination, form the 44 phonemes (sounds) that make up the English language. Letters and Sounds teaches children to attend to the most basic element of sounds they hear in words, and through planned, play-based and hands-on activities they progress from talking to writing, and from listening to reading.

Within the Letters and Sounds program children learn to distinguish letters and sounds as they progress through the six phases:

Phase One activities concentrate on developing children’s speaking and listening skills, phonological awareness and oral blending and segmenting. Phase One activities pave the way for children to make a good start in reading and writing.

Phase Two teaches at least 19 letters and moves children from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with written letters.

Phase Three teaches another 25 graphemes (letters/combinations of letters). Children continue to practise blending and segmenting, and apply this knowledge to learn to read and spell simple two-syllable words and captions.

Phase Four consolidates children’s knowledge of graphemes (letters) in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.

Phase Five broadens children’s knowledge of graphemes and phonemes (sounds) for use in reading and spelling. They learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and other graphemes they already know.

Phase Six enables children to become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers.

Source: Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics (2007)

Marissa Munro

Head of Early Years (Pre-Kindergarten to Year 2)