📘 You sit. The word under the boat is ship.

What you’ll learn

1. The ship is not three letters talkingExplain that a letter team is two or three letters taught as one sound, and tell a team apart from adjacent consonants that still keep two sounds.English has 40+ phonemes and 26 letters, so some sounds borrow a group of letters. Ship is three sounds, not four. Stop is not a team at the start. Year 1’s own words are letters or groups of letters.
2. The hush teamsRead the common consonant digraphs sh, ch, th, ng and ck as one sound each, and treat qu as a taught unit.Section 1 of the phonics screening check expects sh, ch, th, ng, ck and the doubles. Th has two voices. Ng is not n plus g. Ck follows a short vowel in short words.
3. Vowel teams that singRead the first long-vowel teams — ai/ay, ee, igh, oa — and use Appendix 1’s place rules about where ai and oa will not sit.These teams often say the letter’s name. Ai and oi almost never end a word; ay and oy do. Igh is three letters and still one sound. Oa is rare at the end.
4. Teams that change their mindsRecognise that oo, ow and ea each have two common sounds, and try the one that makes a word you know.Year 2 names this as alternative sounds for graphemes. The screening check is strict on real words and kinder on pseudo-words. Accents are allowed. Guessing from a picture is not the route.
5. Three letters, still one soundRead the trigraphs igh, air and ear as one sound, and spot more than one team inside a short word such as church.Count mouthfuls, not letters. Igh, air and tch are three-letter teams. Or and ur are r-controlled vowel teams. One word can hold two teams at once.
6. Spot the team, then blendUse a four-move routine — look, spot, sound the team, blend — including on words that mix a team with adjacent consonants.Underline or cover the team before you blend. The screening check requires the blend itself. Train is t, r, ai, n: two neighbours, one team, one last sound.
7. Teams on the streetFind one taught team on a real sign, packet or book cover, and leave unread the pairs you have not been taught yet.A street does not follow a phonics scheme. Spot one team you own. Ph and the flipping teams will turn up in kitchens and shop windows. Tonight, steal one pair off a real sign.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Department for Education, National curriculum in England: English programmes of study (Year 1 word reading: respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes — letters or groups of letters — for all 40+ phonemes, including alternative sounds; blend taught GPCs; Year 2: recognise alternative sounds for graphemes), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study
• Department for Education, English Appendix 1: Spelling (Year 1 revision of consonant and vowel digraphs and adjacent consonants; ff, ll, ss, zz and ck after a single vowel; tch; vowel digraphs and trigraphs including ai/oi vs ay/oy, ee, ea both sounds, igh, oa, oo both sounds, ow both sounds, oi, or, ur, air, ear; ph and wh), https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7ccc06ed915d63cc65ce61/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf
• Standards and Testing Agency, Phonics screening check: structure and content of the check (Section 1 consonant digraphs ch, ck, ff, ll, ng, sh, ss, th, zz and frequent vowel digraphs ar, ee, oi, oo, or; Section 2 ph, wh, less consistent vowel digraphs, trigraphs air and igh, alternative pronunciations), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-sample-materials-and-training-video/phonics-screening-check-structure-and-content-of-the-check
• Standards and Testing Agency, Assessment framework for the development of the year 1 phonics screening check (expected standard; definition of a consonant digraph; qu as a special-case digraph despite two phonemes; r-controlled pairs folded into vowel digraphs; oo and ea accent footnotes; purpose of pseudo-words), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-framework-for-the-development-of-the-year-1-phonics-screening-check/assessment-framework-for-the-development-of-the-year-1-phonics-screening-check
• Department for Education, The reading framework (the English alphabetic code: how letters or groups of letters represent the sounds of the language; systematic synthetic phonics from Reception), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-reading-framework-teaching-the-foundations-of-literacy
• Department for Education and Skills, Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics (2007), Phase 3 graphemes ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7aa7b6e5274a34770e630c/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf
• Common Core State Standards, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.3.a know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs; RF.1.3.c know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds; RF.2.3.b additional common vowel teams, https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/1/
• Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse practice guide: Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (Recommendation 3: teach students to decode words; underline the letter combination being taught, with oi as the worked example), https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguide/21

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

Related courses