Children entering Phase Four will be able to represent each of 42 phonemes (sounds) by a grapheme (letter), and be able to blend phonemes (sounds) to read CVC words (eg. sheep) and segment CVC (eg. night) words for spelling. They will have some experience in reading simple two-syllable words and captions. They will know letter names and be able to read and spell some tricky words such as said, have, like, do, some, so, come, little, one, were, there, out, what, when.  

The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes (letters) in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants (eg. st) and polysyllabic words (eg. handstand).

It must always be remembered that phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words – decodable and tricky – is the ultimate goal.