Reception
Where they start
What your child is learning
Reception is the year your child meets phonics for the first time. It is also the year you start hearing words from school you may not have heard since you were at school yourself.
By the end of the year, in a school using Little Wandle (the programme most state primaries now use), your child will have been taught the basic letter sounds (s, a, t, p, i, n and the rest) and the common two-letter sounds like sh, ch and ai. They will be starting to put these together to read short words, then slightly longer ones like 'stamp' or 'crunch'. This is what their teacher means by Phases 2, 3 and 4.
What the school might call it
You will hear a few words a lot this year. A 'grapheme' is a letter or group of letters that stands for one sound. A 'phoneme' is the sound itself. So when a teacher says 'sh makes one sound', they mean the two-letter grapheme 'sh' represents the single phoneme /sh/.
You will also hear about 'tricky words', common words like 'the', 'was' and 'said' that cannot yet be sounded out using the sounds your child has been taught. These are learned by sight, a few at a time.
What you might see, hear, or be sent home
In most Reception classes, two books come home each week. One is a decodable book, matched to the sounds your child has been taught, and your child reads this to you. The other is a sharing book, which you read aloud to them. The sharing book is for love of stories and for vocabulary; it is not a test of reading.
You may also see weekly updates on which sounds were introduced in class, and the school may send home a pronunciation guide so you know how each sound is being said.
Common questions at this stage
'Why is my child still on wordless books?' Some early decodable books have no words. This is deliberate, so that children practise reading the pictures before the code.
'My child can already read. Why are the books so easy?' Phonics is also for spelling and writing. A child who can read fluently may still be building the code they need to write.
Year 1
How the code expands
What your child is learning
Year 1 begins with a short review of last year's sounds, and then most of the year is spent on Phase 5. This is the year your child learns that English spells the same sound in several different ways. The /ai/ sound, for example, can be 'ai' in rain, 'ay' in day, 'a_e' in cake, or 'ey' in they.
English spelling does not get less complicated than this; the goal of Phase 5 is to give children a big enough toolkit that most words they meet are decodable.
What the school might call it
'Phase 5' is the main phrase. Within it you will hear 'split digraph' (two letters separated by another, like the a and e in 'cake'), 'alternative pronunciation' (the same letters making a different sound, as in 'cat' and 'city'), and 'alternative spelling' (the same sound written different ways, as in 'rain' and 'day').
You will also hear about the Phonics Screening Check, which happens in the week of 8 June 2026. Schools often shorten it to 'the phonics check' or 'the screening'. It is a short, one-to-one reading task with the class teacher.
What you might see, hear, or be sent home
Decodable books continue, now at later phases. You may see book bands such as Pink, Red, Yellow, Blue and Green, moving through the year as your child progresses. Schools typically reassess every six weeks, not continuously.
In the weeks before the screening check, you are likely to hear about 'alien words' or 'pseudo-words'. These are made-up words that follow real phonics rules; they are used in the check to test decoding without letting a child rely on memory. Your child will have practised these in class.
Common questions at this stage
'How do I help without making the screening check feel like a test?' Read with your child for ten minutes most days, using the school's decodable book if you have one. Practise hearing the sounds and putting them back together. Do not drill.
'What if my child does not pass?' They will retake at the end of Year 2 after additional support. Roughly one in five children does not meet the threshold in Year 1, and the great majority catch up within the following year.
A separate guide
We have written a longer guide to the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check, covering what is in it, what the pass mark means, and how to support your child at home without making it a thing. Read the screening check guide.
Year 2
From phonics to spelling patterns
What your child is learning
Most children are past the core phonics programme by Year 2 and have moved into spelling patterns and reading fluency. Little Wandle does not continue as a formal programme in Year 2; schools that use it revisit anything still insecure from Year 1, and spend most of the year on the Year 2 spelling expectations of the National Curriculum.
In practice that means endings like '-tion' (station, nation), '-sion' (mission, vision) and '-le' (little, table), plus suffixes like '-ness', '-ful', '-less' and '-ment'. Children also consolidate the common exception words they are expected to spell correctly by the end of Year 2.
What the school might call it
'Spelling patterns' rather than 'phonics' is the more common phrasing now. You may hear 'homophones' (words that sound the same but mean different things, like 'hear' and 'here'), 'suffix' (an ending that changes a word's meaning, like the 'ful' in 'helpful'), and 'common exception words' (the Year 1 and Year 2 lists of words children should read and spell correctly).
Some children retake the Phonics Screening Check in June if they did not meet the threshold in Year 1. The support around this continues quietly in school.
What you might see, hear, or be sent home
Weekly spelling lists are common, often paired with a Friday test. Decodable books may still come home for children working through Phase 5; most others have moved on to colour-banded books or to a more open choice of books.
The sharing book continues to matter. Children in Year 2 are building comprehension and vocabulary as much as decoding, and being read to at home is one of the strongest predictors of that.
Common questions at this stage
'My child is a confident reader now. Is phonics over?' The reading side is mostly secure. The spelling side is where phonics becomes ongoing work, because English spelling has so many patterns.
'Why did the weekly spellings get harder so fast?' Year 2 covers the National Curriculum list for the year, which introduces many of the words children are expected to read and write correctly by the end of Key Stage 1.
Year 3
Reading to learn
What your child is learning
Year 3 is the first year of Key Stage 2. The focus shifts firmly away from learning to read, and towards reading to learn. Most children are fluent decoders by this point. Spelling work continues through the Year 3 and Year 4 National Curriculum patterns: prefixes like 'un-', 'pre-', 'dis-' and 're-', endings like '-ture' (picture, creature) and '-sure' (measure, treasure), and words from unfamiliar origins like 'gym' or 'school'.
Children who still have gaps in phonics at this stage are supported through a 'Rapid Catch-up' programme in most Little Wandle schools, or its equivalent in schools using other schemes.
What the school might call it
'Prefixes' are beginnings added to a word to change its meaning ('unhappy', 'disappear'). 'Etymology' is the origin of a word; in Year 3, children start to meet Greek and Latin roots that explain why English spelling is as strange as it is. Reading comprehension work has its own vocabulary too: 'inference' (working out something the text does not say directly), 'retrieval' (finding information stated in the text), and 'prediction' (guessing what comes next based on evidence).
What you might see, hear, or be sent home
Longer spelling lists, often with pattern explanations. Reading records that ask for more than just signatures, sometimes with brief comments, prediction or inference questions. Topic-based reading linked to the wider curriculum, for example a history topic that includes non-fiction alongside stories.
Decodable books usually stop coming home unless your child is on a catch-up programme. Reading for pleasure becomes the main ask.
Common questions at this stage
'Should I still be listening to my child read at home?' Yes. Ten minutes most days is still the single most useful thing. Ask your child to tell you what happened in the chapter, as well as read it.
'The school has stopped sending a reading band book. Is something wrong?' Usually not. Year 3 is often when children move to choosing their own books from the class or school library. Ask the teacher what level your child is generally choosing if you want to check.