Reading · KS1 · Phonics and Decoding
KS1 Phonics and Decoding Guidance for Years 1–2
Phonics helps children connect written graphemes with spoken phonemes so unfamiliar words can be decoded. The skill depends on seeing the spelling, saying or hearing the sounds and blending them accurately.
What to understand in this topic
- recognise taught graphemes and connect them with the expected sounds
- blend phonemes through a word rather than guessing from its first letter
- notice common exception words that cannot be decoded entirely by a simple pattern
- re-read a decoded word so it becomes increasingly automatic
A common point of confusion
Using the picture or the first letter to guess a whole word is not the same as decoding it. Good phonics work attends to all the relevant graphemes in sequence.
Try a quick example
Question: Which written word contains the “sh” grapheme: ship or sip?
Answer: ship
The letters s and h work together as the grapheme “sh” in “ship”.
This is a fixed educational example on the page, not a customer result and not a live tutor response.
What a parent can try at home
Choose five words using a grapheme your child has already been taught. Ask them to point to the grapheme, say the sound and blend the whole word, following the method used by their school.
How NexEdu practises this
NexEdu can support text-based recognition and reading-comprehension questions, but it does not hear a child pronounce phonemes or blend words. It should not replace a school’s systematic synthetic phonics programme or an adult listening to the child read.
NexEdu provides guided questions throughout the child’s available daily tutoring time. A hint can follow an incorrect answer, and two consecutive incorrect answers trigger a brief reteach before practice continues. Same-day topic progress can resume where the child left off.
Related learning
About the information on this page
The educational summary helps parents understand the reading skill and its place in the National Curriculum in England. NexEdu is text-based; product statements do not claim oral-reading assessment or a particular reading outcome.