Jolly Phonics Tricky Words, in the Order They Arrive

Jolly Phonics does not number its stages into phases, so tricky words do not arrive on a fixed timetable the way they do in some other schemes. They arrive in step with the seven sound groups: a word stays tricky only until the sounds inside it have been taught. That single idea is the whole order. Once you can see which sounds your child has met, you can work out for yourself which words are fair game and which ones still have to be simply told.

Below is the sequence, group by group, with what each one unlocks and what is still out of reach.

What counts as a tricky word

A tricky word is a word your child cannot get to by sounding out with the sounds they have been taught so far. The is the classic. So is I. Sounding them out does not produce the word, so the teaching move is different: you tell the child the word, they look at it, and you move on.

Do not let a tricky word turn into a five minute negotiation. Tricky words cannot be sounded out. Tell them and move on. That is not giving up, it is the correct instruction.

The important nuance is that trickiness is temporary and personal. A word is only tricky relative to what one child has been taught. Boat is unreadable before Group 4 and ordinary after it.

Why Jolly Phonics has no phase numbers

Jolly Phonics teaches 42 sounds in seven groups, each sound with an action and a song, and then moves on to alternative spellings. It does not use phase numbers at all. If your school sends home a sheet with a phase number on it, that number has come from somewhere else, usually a Letters and Sounds style framework running alongside.

This matters for tricky words because most of the familiar tricky word lists parents find online are organised by phase. They are not wrong, but they are not Jolly Phonics lists either. Our guide to the seven Jolly Phonics groups covers the sound side in full.

The seven groups, and what each one unlocks

1. Group 1: s a t i p n

Six sounds, and already real words: sat, pin, tap, nip, spit. This is the group where blending starts, and it is a bigger moment than the small word list suggests.

Almost everything else is tricky here, which is why the first books are short. The words schools usually introduce first, across schemes, are the and I. Both have to be told.

2. Group 2: c k ck e h r m d

Now cat, hen, red, kick, hand and a few hundred others come into range. The first digraph arrives too, in the form of ck, which is two letters making one sound.

Tricky words still needed at this stage are the small connecting ones: to, go, no and into appear early in most schemes because you cannot write a sentence without them.

3. Group 3: g o u l f b

The remaining common vowels land here, and with o and u in place the number of readable words jumps sharply: dog, bus, fun, flag, lost.

By the end of Group 3 a child has most of the single letter sounds. Books stop feeling like word lists and start feeling like stories.

4. Group 4: ai j oa ie ee or

The first vowel digraphs. Rain, boat, feet, pie and fork all become decodable, and this is usually when parents notice a real change in what their child can manage.

It is also when some previously tricky words quietly stop being tricky. Words a child was told in Group 1 can now be sounded out, and it is worth going back to a couple of them and pointing that out.

5. Group 5: z w ng v oo oo

Two different oo sounds arrive together, the one in book and the one in moon. Children handle this better than adults expect, because they already know both words by ear.

New territory: zoo, wing, van, moon, bang.

6. Group 6: y x ch sh th

The consonant digraphs. Ship, chin, this, fox, yes. These are high frequency sounds and they open up an unusually large number of everyday words for the small number of sounds involved.

Several words that were tricky before Group 6 are simply readable after it, which is a good moment to retire a few flashcards.

7. Group 7: qu ou oi ue er ar

The last of the 42. Quiz, out, coin, farm, her, blue. After this come the alternative spellings, where a child learns that a sound they already know can be written more than one way.

From here on, the list of words that genuinely cannot be sounded out gets short. What remains are the real exceptions.

Where the familiar tricky word lists come from

If your school has given you a list, it is most likely drawn from the Letters and Sounds phase groupings, which are widely used across schemes. Those run roughly as follows: Phase 2 brings the, to, I, no, go and into. Phase 3 brings he, she, we, me, be, was, you, they, all, are, my and her. Phase 4 brings said, so, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, do, when, out and what.

Treat those as the sequence most English primary schools work through, rather than as an official Jolly Phonics list. Our piece on the Letters and Sounds phases sets them out in context. If your school uses its own list, that is the one to follow.

A tricky word is not a hard word. It is a word that has arrived slightly before the sounds inside it.

How to teach a tricky word in twenty seconds

Show the word. Say it. Ask your child to say it. Point at the part that behaves normally, because in most tricky words some of it does. Say the word again. Stop.

That is the whole method. What breaks it is stretching it out. Repeated short exposures across a week beat one long session, and a word met in a sentence sticks better than a word met on a card.

Five things that go wrong

• Sounding out a word that cannot be sounded out, then asking the child why it did not work.
• Jumping in too fast. Wait five seconds. Most children get there at about four.
• Giving the whole word when they stall on a decodable one. Give the sounds instead: s-t-o-p hands them the win.
• Turning the book into a test. The book coming home is meant to be easy. It is practice.
• Carrying on past the point of interest. Stop while they still want more.

When a word will not stick

Some words take a month. Said and one are famous for it. A word that is not sticking is usually a word that has not been seen often enough in real sentences, rather than a sign of anything else.

Write it on a scrap of paper and stick it somewhere it will be seen in passing. Use it in a sentence you say out loud. Put it into a story where your child is the character, which is roughly the point of a personalised decodable book.

If a large number of words are refusing to stick, or reading is getting tearful, that is worth raising with the teacher rather than working around at home.

Tricky words and the Year 1 screening check

The Year 1 phonics screening check is taken in June. A child reads 40 words aloud to a teacher, one to one: 20 real words and 20 made-up ones, the made-up ones printed beside a small alien. The made-up words are the point, because they cannot be recognised from memory.

Tricky words therefore matter less to the check than decoding does. Practising sounding out is the better use of time. The threshold mark is published each June and has been 32 out of 40 for many years, though it is set annually rather than fixed.

Where Lindo Phonics fits

Lindo makes personalised decodable storybooks that follow a scheme's published progression. Pick Jolly Phonics and a group, add your child's name, and the story uses only the sounds taught up to that point, with tricky words kept to the few the story genuinely needs.

A word your child has been told six times on a card and never seen in a sentence is not really learned yet. If you want the background, start with what decodable books actually are. The publisher's own site at Jolly Learning covers the programme from the school's side.

Lindo Phonics is not connected to Jolly Phonics and is not endorsed by them. We match the published progression so a story only uses sounds your child has already been taught.