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Phonic and Writing Phrases

Phonics Phrases

For each of the Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences in Success for All Phonics we teach children a short alliterative phrase to help them to remember it, e.g. for ‘s’ we have ‘The snake slides and slithers.’ If your child is having difficulty in remembering a GPC, reminding them of the alliterative phrase might help. We also have helpful video guidance for this that can be viewed here.

Letter Formation Cues

When children learn to write lower case letters in the correct way, we use a short rhyme to help them remember how they should do this, e.g. for ‘s’ this is ‘Left around, right around, from head to tail.’ We want children to form their letters in the correct way as early as possible and prevent them from developing poor letter writing habits that will need to be corrected later.

The table below contains a list of Phonics Phrases and Letter Formation Cues to support with reading and writing at home.

Alliterative Phrases and Letter Writing Cues

wdt_ID GPC Phonics Phrase Letter Formation Cue
1 /s/ ‘The snake slides and slithers.’ ‘Left around, right around, from head to tail.’
2 /a/ ‘Alphie asks for apples.’ ‘Around the apple and down the leaf.’
3 /t/ ‘Tap the tall tower.’ ‘Down the tower, lift and cross.’
4 /p/ ‘Peek at the proud parrot.’ ‘From head to tail then right around the parrot.’
5 /i/ ‘Imagine itchy insects.’ ‘Down the insect, lift and dot.’
6 /n/ ‘Ned is near the net.’ ‘From head to toe and over the net.’
7 /m/ ‘The man marches on mountains.’ ‘From the man go down, climb one mountain then the other.’
8 /d/ ‘Don’t disturb the dinosaur.’ ‘Around his back then head to toe.’
9 /g/ ‘The girl is glad.’ ‘Left around the girl, down her plait and curl.’
10 /o/ ‘The octopus observes olives.’ ‘From the top of the head and all the way round the octopus.’

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