The tray game
The 27 children in the reception class settle into a circle and face the teacher who, kneeling on the floor in the circle, produces a tray of objects. The children each choose an object before passing the tray on to their neighbour.

The reception class is going to learn about phonemes at the end of words and the teacher starts them off by asking them to segment (separate the sounds of) words by telling her the first sound or phoneme of their object. She points seemingly randomly at the children in the circle who hold up their object and with a keenness that comes from confidence in the task reply. "sh-sh-sh-sheep", "s-s-s-sock" and "ch-ch-ch-chicken".

Next the teacher wants them to think about what sound they can hear at the end of the word for their object. "I know a word that has the same sound at the beginning and the end," says one boy enthusiastically, "church has a /ch/ sound at the beginning and a /ch/ at the end."

"That's right. How many phonemes does the word church have? Let's count them as I write the word." The teacher turns to the white board behind her and writes the word "church" as the children say /ch/./ur/./ch/ and there is a resounding murmur of "three" among the seated pupils.

Next, the teacher selects an object from her tray and tells the children that it is a "pen, p-e-nnnn". She directs the children to listen and then match the last phoneme (nnn) to the objects on the tray. A crowd of enthusiastic hands go up clutching a little plastic farmyard hen, a number ten, a toy pan, a toy man, and a fan.

The tray game is an accelerated learning game that develops phonological awareness - a conscious sensitivity to the sounds that make up speech. It is important because in English we use combinations of letters to represent the sounds of speech when we read and write. The tray game is just one of many games and techniques outlined in Progression in Phonics - materials for whole class teaching recently produced by the National Literacy Strategy, and now available on an interactive CD-Rom.

The materials outline a seven-step progression for teaching children the essential phonic knowledge for independent reading and the starting point for spelling. Teachers working with the new materials have been staggered at the positive impact of this much more explicit way of teaching and learning. The teacher described above commented: "Most of them know all their letter sounds and they are transferring these skills into their reading and writing. It's fantastic. I think they've cracked the code."

Searching for meaning
In cracking the code readers seem to use different processes simultaneously. They process the patterns of the letter shapes; the sounds (phonemes); the grammatical context of the word; and the likely meaning in relation to the text. They constantly cross check and ensure that the right meaning is generated from the text.

The National Literacy Strategy mirrors these skills in its searchlight model. This places phonics within a balanced model of strategies that readers and writers need to draw upon to successfully problem-solve their way through reading and writing with independence.

One of the problems facing many pupils today is that they do not have rapid and clear access to the way in which letters correspond to sounds in English. This is known as being able to access the 'alphabetic code'. Without this knowledge it is practically impossible to gain a high level of fluency in reading English because the language relies on first being decoded from symbols into sounds and words.

Segmenting and blending
Despite some of its irregularities, English is an alphabetic language and in order to read and make meaning you have first to decode the symbols. Conversely, in order to write and spell you have to encode the words into the letter combinations that represent these sounds and meanings.
 
Research has shown that children do not naturally work out that phonemes exist. They are not obvious in the flow of speech as discrete units. The goal of early literacy teaching is to make children aware of the existence of words as tools for encoding speech, experiences and thought. For children to have access to the alphabetic principle that underpins written English the starting point is the development of phonological awareness.

Teaching in the Progression in Phonics materials is not just knowledge based - that is teaching the letter sounds of the alphabetic code - equally as important are the skills based in developing phonological awareness through separating (segmenting)  and reforming (blending) words into phonemes. By representing phonemes through spelling and combinations of letters, segmenting and blending explore how words come to be written: e.g. that /c/-/a/-/t/ makes /cat/. Research indicates that children who have poor phonological awareness go on to have difficulty with both reading and spelling.

Seven Steps to cracking the code
The Progression in Phonics materials provides techniques to introduce children to letter sound relationships in a series of seven steps. Children are taught to tune into and distinguish phonemes but also to see that there is a logical code for them to understand.
 
From an early age children should have an opportunity to build on their natural inclination to listen to, produce and play with sounds. There are strong links between experience of the patterns and rhythms of poetry, rhyme and alliteration and early phonological awareness. Children also seem to be helped to make connections through music and rhythmical language play and so do adults as witnessed by our willingness to participate in puns, jokes and language play.

Steps two to five introduce sounds to letters in careful stages. Children are trained to hear phonemes at the beginnings of words in step 2, at the ends of words in step 3 and in the middle of simple three letter words in step 4.

In step five children are introduced to more complex patterns of letters involving sequences of consonants such as 'S-c-r' and 'cl'. Step 6 introduces children to one spelling of the main long vowel phonemes - ai, ee, ie, oa, oo, or, ir, oi, ou. These spellings provide some stability to reinforce that the phonic code is, at heart, regular. Finally, in step 7 children meet the complexities of the phonic code learning the different spellings of the long vowel family that they met in step 6 (e.g. ay, igh, ew).

By the age of seven children will have a broad knowledge of the alphabetic code and an ability to segment and blend phonemes as a starting point for reading and spelling. They can then begin to explore the frequencies of letter patterns and some of the regularising features of English spelling through investigative work in Year 2 and into key stage 2.
Structured progression
The phonics instruction in Progression in Phonics draws upon what we know about how to accelerate learning to enable readers to focus on the meaning of texts rather than use up valuable memory space in decoding the letters to read or encoding them to spell. Learning is accelerated because it is multisensory and builds on children's natural curiosity about language and willingness to play and explore sounds.
 

Multisensory methods of teaching  Visual - show-me games, teacher demonstration, whole class watching each other.  Auditory - sound games, segmentation and blending activities, playing with sounds, rhymes and songs.  Kinaesthetic - reinforcing learning through activity, action games, selecting sounds.

The materials, resources and games are not prescriptive but provide a structured progression through phonic knowledge linked to teaching and learning objectives. Alongside these nuts and bolts, children are constantly having the application of this process modelled for them through the shared reading and writing in the other parts of the literacy hour. Here they see how an experienced language user, the teacher, uses the strategies of decoding and encoding to make and capture meaning. The pupils are supported through guided work to transfer and apply these skills in the context of their own meaning making. Eventually phonics becomes part of the automatic repertoire of skills a reader brings to the reading/writing process. Comprehension then becomes the prime focus for reading because the decoding is not getting in the way.

Back in the reception class we joined earlier the children are now engaged in guided and independent activities. Some children are working with the teacher, others are playing literacy games or working on the computer and listening to story tapes. In the role-play area, a boy is pretending to take a message on the phone. He starts making notes in the book provided. Peering over his shoulder, I watch him beginning to make use of the phonic knowledge he has become aware of as he experiments with letter shapes and squiggles of his own invention. He reads it back to himself and it is obvious that he is well on the way to cracking the alphabetic code. He has become aware of the medium that will convey his message.
    
Progression in Phonics has been replaced by the Government's Letters and Sounds programme. More information
 
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