How to teach phonics with Rock Stepper

Phonics are the sounds of the spoken English lanugage with indivdual letters or groups of letters. Phonics are used to help childrean learn and understand the alphabetic principle which then leads to reading and writing.

For some parents and carers, phonics can be confusing as using phonics was introduced in 1998. However don’t worry, there are plenty of sources of information to help and teachers are great in helping parents learn phonics.

Most children will start to learn phonics in recepetion class, some pre-school settings will also start to introduce the concept of phonics too. The Rock Stepper at bundle is a great resource to introduce phonics to your little stepper or, and as you’ll find out a great way for your little stepper to showcase what they have been learning at school.

What is Letters and Sounds?

The Letters and Sounds is framework which uses phonics to teach reading. Its used in lots of schools in the Uk and you can read a document with all the details about the framework over at  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/letters-and-sounds. However, its…. 214 pages long and nobody has time to read 214 pages of a document when you have a little running around!

So this page goes over the basics of what you need to learn to get starting with phonics, and best of all if you have a Rock Stepper mat its going to a little more easier and fun!

What are the phrases of Letters and sounds?

There are a total of 6 phases to the letters and sounds frame work. As you expect you start at phase 1 in pre-school and then Phase 6 generally around Year 2.

This page we cover phases 1 to 3.

1. Phase 1
2. Phase 2
3. Phase 3
4. Phase 4
5. Phase 5
6. Phase 6

Phase 1

Phase 1 is all about sounds and listening. At this stage its not about letters and phonics but using the environment and you body. There are 7 groups to cover.

• Environmental sounds.
• Instrumental sounds.
• Body percussion.
• Rhythm and rhyme.
• Alliteration.
• Voice sounds.
• Oral blending and segmenting.

Great news is lots of this will have been covered in your everyday interaction with your little stepper.

You can read more about phase 1 over at xxxxxx. We’ll be building more content and products which can be used in phrase 1 over the next year. But for now its phase 2 where you can really use your Rock Stepper mat and flash cards.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is where sound are introduced and combinations to pronouce words.

To make it easier there is an order to which sounds to start with. This is split into 5 Sets.

Set 1

In set 1 there are 4 letters. The key here is the pronuciation of each of the letter. The best way to learn is by listning to the clips below and then the example words which use the same sounds.

Set 2

In set 2 there are 4 letters. The key here is the pronuciation of each of the letter. The best way to learn is by listning to the clips below and then the example words which use the same sounds.

Set 3

In set 3 there are 4 letters. Pay careful attention to the difference in the pronuciation of c and k.

Set 4

In set 4 there are 4 letters. Here we meet the first of the “special friends”. These are when there are two or three letters together and they are pronouced together.

Set 5

In set 5 there are 5 phonics to learn. This is the last set in phase 1 and we see the second of the special frends with “ss”.

Phase 2 tricky words

As ever with the english langauge there are expecptions, while learning phonics you’ll come across tricky words. These can be sometime be called red words. These have differnt sounds to the individual phonic blends. Therefore you have to learn them seperatly as entire words.

• the
• to
• no
• go
• I
• into