Building strong phonics skills is essential not only for passing the check but for fostering confident, independent readers.
Here, we’ve gathered a range of tried-and-tested phonics activities designed to support sound recognition, blending, segmenting and spelling, all while keeping learning fun and interactive. Plus, we’ve included a free phonics tracker template to help you monitor pupils’ progress and plan targeted support.
Sound recognition and blending
Helping pupils identify and blend sounds is a crucial step in developing early reading skills. Try these activities in your classroom:
Sound-to-Letter Matching: Use flashcards of letters and sounds. Pupils match the correct sound to the letter or digraph.
Sound Boxes (Elkonin Boxes): Pupils segment words into individual phonemes by placing counters or tokens in boxes as they say each sound.
Robot Talk: Teachers say words slowly, separating the phonemes (e.g., /c/ /a/ /t/), and pupils blend them to read the word.
Segmenting and Spelling
Once pupils can hear and blend sounds, segmenting and spelling helps solidify their understanding:
Segment and Spell: Pupils hear a word, segment the phonemes and write each sound in order.
Sound Swap Games: Pupils use letter tiles to change a phoneme in a word to create a new word (e.g., swap /c/ in “cat” with /h/ → “hat”).
Word Ladders: Start with one word, pupils change one sound at a time to make a new word and see how high they can make their word latter!
Grapheme/Phoneme Games
Make phonics practice more interactive with games that focus on graphemes and phonemes:
Phonics Snap: Pupils play snap with cards showing graphemes or words.
Phoneme Fishing: Pupils “fish” for words or letters that match a particular phoneme.
Odd-One-Out: Pupils listen to or read a set of words and identify the word that doesn’t share the target phoneme.
Nonsense or Alien Word Practice
The phonics screening check includes ‘alien’ or nonsense words, so it’s essential pupils are comfortable reading unfamiliar words:
Alien Word Games: Pupils read nonsense words aloud to find out the name of the alien, use visuals like “alien characters” to make it fun.
Alien Word Sorting: Pupils sort nonsense words by phoneme or spelling pattern.
Listening & Discrimination
Developing pupils’ listening skills ensures they can discriminate between similar sounds:
Phoneme Spotting: Pupils listen to a sentence and identify the target sound.
Odd Sound Out: Pupils hear three words and identify the one with a different initial, medial, or final sound.
Sound Detective: Pupils distinguish between words that differ by only one sound (e.g., “pin” vs “pen”).
Phonics Fun and Games
Finally, make phonics practice engaging with activities that feel like play:
Phonics Treasure Hunt: Hide cards with words or phonemes around the classroom for pupils to find and read.
Interactive Whiteboard Activities: Use the interactive phonics activities in Lexia Core5 Reading on the whiteboard to engage the whole class
Phonics Board Games: Create simple board games where pupils read words to move spaces forward
Free Phonics Tracker Template
To make monitoring progress easier, we’ve created a phonics tracker template that allows you to record pupils’ phonics knowledge, identify areas for targeted support, and ensure no learner is left behind. It’s designed to complement your teaching and provide clear insights at a glance.
The file will open read-only so make sure to click ‘Download File’ to get your own copy.
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