Teaching of English phonics gives an important baseline for all of the children, no matter their age. As the children learn sounds they canvery quickly, begin to use this knowledge to sound out simple words. Later, children will blend these sounds to read small and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, moving onto larger words. The aim is for children to experience the independence of reading specially adapted short books early on.

In addition to this, the teaching of phonics can be complimented by learning to recognise common whole words which are often difficult to read through phonetic knowledge alone. For example, ‘because’ or ‘was’.