Our guide to Phonics Letters and Sounds books

March 1st 2021

With children of all ages having missed months of schooling during the last twelve months, and with the many challenges of remote teaching and learning, we know that schools are looking at the best ways to support catch up when pupils head back to schools from March 8th. 

Many schools have been looking at their Letters and Sounds provision to ensure full coverage of systematic synthetic phonics and support those children who may have fallen behind. For those reviewing their school's phonics books and teaching this term, our team of curriculum specialists have shared a few of their ideas and things to bear in mind below.

1. Immerse yourself in the Letters and Sounds framework. The books don’t replace the teaching, but rather supplement it. For all pupils, but particularly those who don’t have English speaking parents at home, we can’t rely solely on the books. Structured lessons, with repetition and group work, to ensure children grasp the sounds, are crucial. The GPCs should be in a clearly defined sequence, with the skills of blending and segmenting taught from the outset. The first half-term in Reception can be spent looking at rhythm and rhyme, and building on what the children have learnt in nursery. Make the sounds yourself, so the pupils are used to hearing them.

2. Fidelity to the Letters and Sounds programme is key. Each book must be introduced at the appropriate point during the teaching of the Letters and Sounds programme, when children have learned the relevant grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) that they are being asked to read, so that it is fully decodable.

3. Books should have appealing illustrations to engage children, and be age appropriate.

4. Ensure all of your pupils are represented. Using a wide range of books including both fiction and non-fiction not only helps ensure that all children will find something to interest them, it also means that all of your pupils are more likely to see themselves represented in what they read. The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE)’s latest Reflecting Realities study found that just 10% of children’s books published in 2019 featured characters from an ethnic minority. More so than ever, it’s crucial to find books that represent the diverse and varied experiences and cultures of all pupils, even from a very early age. To enable schools to use as wide a range of books as possible, mixing and matching books from a range of published schemes can work well, as long as each book and the sounds covered are introduced in the correct order and according to the Letters and Sounds framework. 

5. Phonics shouldn't be taught in isolation. The teaching of phonics and Letters and Sounds shouldn’t be separate to all other learning; while phonics should be the prime strategy for teaching children to read, comprehension skills and promoting reading for pleasure alongside the phonics teaching are also important. 'As well as being able to decode the words, a child can only be considered to be reading if they also understand what they have read. Phonics is the step up to word recognition - automatic reading of all words - decodable and tricky - is the ultimate goal.' (A Framework for Teaching Phonics: To support Letters and Sounds, Jacqueline Harris)

Pupils should be exposed to a wide range of reading material as part of their learning across the whole curriculum.

6. There are a range of published schemes that are fully decodable and designed for use in teaching the phonics Letters and Sounds framework. You can find out more about these schemes here.

Need more advice on new phonics books?

To help you assess your existing provision and see where any gaps are, our curriculum specialists have also put together a free Letters and Sounds phases chart, highlighting how many fiction and non-fiction titles are available within each scheme, and at each phase.

Download the Letters and Sounds phases chart

Got a question about phonics or Letters and Sounds?

Our team are here to help and advise and can discuss your phonics requirements with you. Email hello@peters.co.uk or call 0121 666 6646 to get in touch.