Phonic Phase 4

Phonic Phase 4 of Letters and Sounds relates to the blending of adjacent consonants at the beginning and end of simple words where the single letter sounds are blended together left to right all through the word.

Examples of the adjacent consonants found at the beginning of English words are 'bl.., cl.., fl.., gl.., pl.., sl.., br.., dr.., fr.., gr.., pr.., tr.., sk.., sm.., sn.., sp.., st.., sw.., tw..' in words like 'blob, clap, flag, glad, plop, slip, bran, drip, frog, grab, pram, tram, skip, smell, snip, stop, swim, twig'.

Examples of adjacent consonants found at the end of English words are '..mp, ..nd, ..nk, ..nt, ..st, ..ft, ..ld, ..lp, ..lt, ..sk' in words like 'jump, hand, bank, tent, lost, left, held, help, belt, ask'.

There are also some combinations of three adjacent consonants such as 'spr.., str.., spl..' as found in the words 'spring, street, split'.

Some adjacent consonants e.g. 'ch, sh, th' are not blended together in the above manner. They are the spellings of distinct English sounds in their own right, and their sound is different to the sounds of the two separate letters.

When two consonants next to each other represent only one sound they are known as consonant digraphs. These are 'ch (chip), th (thank), sh (ship), qu (quack), ng (ring), ph (phonics)'.  These are first introduced in the A Digraphs Series.

Sometimes digraphs are blended with another consonant to give 'shr.., thr.., ..nch, ..tch' as in the words 'shrub, thrush, branch, catch'.

 **** Reading Books **** 

All our reading books from book 3 in the A Series contain at least one word with adjacent consonants, e.g. 'frog' (book 3A), 'grass' (book 6A) and 'jump' (book 8A).

However, the easiest series to concentrate on adjacent consonants is the Revised Pig Family Blends Series, although there are many words of this type in the Rhyming CVC Series. 

The Early Vowel Combinations Series, introduces the vowel digraphs 'ie (pie), y (sky), er (after), oa (boat)' as well as many words with adjacent consonants.

The Combining Consonants Series, published in December 2010, is a revision of five of the best books from the old Consonants, Blends and Clusters Series, which has not been reprinted. This series also revises the consonant digraphs 'th, sh, ch, ..ng' and adds '..dge, ..tch' as well as adding the high-frequency words 'be, what, some, there, where'.

**** Worksheets ****

We have a photocopiable volume of 48 worksheets for writing activities. This is called Blending Consonants Worksheets. These worksheets only use adjacent consonants in words containing the 'short' vowels 'a, e, i, o, u'. Words with other vowel spellings are not used.