St Edward's Church of England Primary School

Phase 1 - Letters & Sounds

Phase 1 is the very start of your child's journey. It is all about listening to sounds and learning to discriminate between different sounds. The Phase focuses on sounds in everyday life rather than sounds in words. Phase 1 lays the essential foundations for all the learning that follows. If your child cannot identify individual sounds in the everyday world and differentiate between them e.g. a car horn and a boiling kettle, then they will struggle to begin hearing the separate sounds that make up words.

Letters are not introduced until Phase 2. If you have a pre-school child or a child early in Reception then you will find these activities particularly useful. If your child is a little older but struggles to hear the 'separate sounds in words' then you may also find it useful to return to some of these activities.