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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Phonics phases sound mats

TheSchoolRun phonics sound mats
Use our free phonics phases sound mats to see what sounds your child will be taught when in their phonics learning journey. These mats cover phonics phases 2-5.
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Keystage:  EYFS, Reception, KS1, Year 1, Year 2

What are phonics phases?

Phonics phases are a way of breaking down learning to read and write into smaller steps. They help children understand how letters and sounds work together to make words.

  • Phase 1 is all about listening and making sounds. Children learn to recognise different sounds in the environment, like animal noises or everyday sounds.
  • In Phase 2, children start to learn about letters and the sounds they make. They'll learn simple letter-sound correspondences, like 's' for snake or 'm' for monkey.
  • During Phase 3, children learn more sounds and how some letters can make more than one sound. For example, 'c' can make a 'k' sound as in cat or an 's' sound as in circle.
  • In Phase 4 children learn to blend sounds together to read words. They start to read simple words by blending individual sounds together, like c-a-t for "cat".
  • Phase 5 focuses on more complicated sounds and spelling patterns. Children start to learn about alternative spellings for the same sound, like 'ai' in rain and 'ay' in day.
  • Finally, in Phase 6 children become more fluent readers and spellers. They learn to read and spell longer, more complex words and understand more about how words are structured.

How will our Phonics phases sound mat help your child?

Our colourful phonics phases sound mat present the phonemes and graphemes children learn to read in Reception and Year 1, organised according to their phonics phase.

You can also use our interactive sound mats to listen to each of the sounds.