Phase 5 Phonics – Year 1 Spelling Games: Dots and Dashes

Pupils will revisit and apply their phase 5 phonics knowledge from Letters and Sounds when playing ‘Dots and Dashes’. These spelling games will develop pupils’ segmenting skills, identifying the phonemes (sounds) in words and choosing the correct graphemes (letters) that represent these.

To play the game, pupils must find words that match the dots and dashes cards. Their knowledge of sound buttons will help them with this task. A variety of dots and dashes and word cards with VC, CV, CVC and two-syllable words are included.

What is phase 5 phonics?

Pupils will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and the graphemes they already know.

Pupils should become quicker at recognising graphemes with more than one letter in words and at blending the phonemes they represent. When spelling words, they will learn to use the appropriate graphemes to represent the phonemes within words and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.

Letter Progression in Phase 5

• New graphemes for reading: ay. ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ew, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e
• Alternative pronunciations for graphemes: i (fin, find), o (hot, cold), c (cat, cent), g (got, giant), u (but, put- south), ow (cow, blow), ie (tie, field), ea (eat, bread), er (farmer, her), a (hat, what), y (yes, by, very), ch (chin, school, chef), ou (out, shoulder, could, you)
• Alternative spellings for these phonemes are also taught: c, ch, f, j, m, m, ng, r, s, sh, v, w, e, i, o, u, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

National Curriculum English programme of study links

• Pupils should apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words
• Pupils should be taught to spell words containing the 40+ phonemes already taught
• Pupils should use the process of segmenting spoken words into sounds before choosing words graphemes to represent the sounds

This resource is part of the Phonics resources collection.
View more from this collection

• Teacher notes
• Dots and dashes cards
• Word cards