Even if you are embarking on a primary school teacher training degree or early years degree course straight after A levels, it is likely that phonics is something that will be completely new to you. Since 2012, the phonics screener test has been administered in schools to year 1 children towards the end of the academic year. Most schools teach phonics to all Foundation Stage and Key stage 1 children in short 20-25  minute sessions, 4 or 5 times a week.

According to the Department for Education, phonics is a way to teach children to read quickly and skilfully. Reception aged children are taught the initial sounds of the letters of the alphabet, though not in alphabetical order and they will gradually learn to read and write simple consonant-vowel-consonant words (CVCs), by learning how to blend these sounds together. They then move on to look at other letter combinations, like ch, or, ar – these 2 letter single sounds are known as digraphs. Trigraphs are sounds which contain 3 letters – igh, air and ure, for instance.

Once the basics are mastered, then phonics lessons move onto the finer intricacies of the English language.

However, as a trainee teacher who was never taught phonics at school, this can all seem a little like learning a foreign language.  However, it doesn’t take long to pick up the basics and find ways to teach this to young children.  There are lots of phonics resources and games available to either buy or to download from popular teaching websites to help new trainee teachers .