What happens once the ‘Basic Code’ has been taught?

Some children do need to continue working on the ‘Basic Code’ so they are given lots of opportunities to do so. We start to introduce the ‘Advanced Code’ using Big Books (fiction and non-fiction). The ‘Advanced Code’ refers to two or more letters representing a sound e.g. ‘sh’ as in shop, ‘ee’ as in tree, ‘igh’ as in high. A large number of sounds are represented by two or more letters so this work continues until the end of the Reception year and is continued into Year 1.

You may find this list of literacy terms helpful:

Basic Code: refers to the most common sounds and those represented by one letter e.g. ‘b’ as in bed

Phoneme: smallest unit of sound in a word may be represented by one, two, three or four letters e.g. to, shoe, through

Sound picture: written representation/picture of a sound - may contain one or more letters

Advanced Code: two or more letters representing a sound e.g. see, grew, high

CVC words: words containing consonant, vowel, consonant e.g bed, dog, cat

We do hope that you find this information useful.