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A Phonics Glossary for Parents

By J. Ratcliffe · 16 October 2026

Illustration of a child in a white astronaut suit crouching on grass to look closely at a large brown ant — A page from a Read Write Inc Set 1 story, the stage where the first single letter sounds and the special friends are taught.

Most phonics jargon is one ordinary idea wearing a technical coat, and about a dozen terms cover nearly everything a parent will ever meet. A phoneme is a sound. A grapheme is how that sound is written. A digraph is two letters making one sound. Everything else is either a scheme's own house vocabulary or a label for a stage in the year. This is a glossary you can skim in five minutes and come back to when a word turns up in a reading record and nobody has explained it.

The words you will hear first

These are the ones that appear in the first parents' evening of Reception.

Phoneme: A single sound in a word. Cat has three phonemes, ship has three, lamp has four. Letters are not the same as phonemes, which is the source of most confusion.
Grapheme: The letter or letters used to write one phoneme. In duck, ck is a single grapheme. A sound can be written with one, two, three or four letters.
Blending: Pushing sounds together to make a word. S-t-o-p goes in, stop comes out. This is reading.
Segmenting: Breaking a spoken word into its sounds. Stop goes in, s-t-o-p comes out. This is spelling.
Oral blending: Blending with no letters involved at all, just your voice. You say c-u-p and your child says cup. Every scheme starts here, before a single letter appears.
Digraph: Two letters making one sound: sh, ch, th, ai, ee, oa, ck.
Trigraph: Three letters making one sound: igh in night, air in chair, ear in hear.
Split digraph: A vowel digraph with a consonant between the two letters, as in cake and time. There are five: a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e.
Adjacent consonants: Two consonants next to each other making two separate sounds, as in stop or lamp. Not a digraph, and often taught in a stretch of the year with no new sounds in it.
CVC, CCVC, CVCC: Shorthand for word shapes, where C is a consonant sound and V a vowel sound. Cat is CVC, stop is CCVC, lamp is CVCC. Sounds-Write uses these labels openly with children.

The words about the books that come home

These are the terms most likely to appear on a bookmark or in a reading record.

Decodable book: A book built only from sounds a child has already been taught. Decodable describes the fit between a book and one particular child, not a property of the book on the shelf.
Storybook: In Read Write Inc, the book read in school with the group across the week.
Book Bag Book: In Read Write Inc, the book that comes home. It is a different story from the Storybook, built from the same phonic content and the same green words. This is the single most common parent confusion.
The three reads: In Little Wandle, the same book is read three times in school in a week: once for decoding, once for expression, once for understanding. The book then comes home, so your read is the fourth. That is why it looks easy.
Band, level, phase, set, group, unit: All names for where a child is in the progression. Bug Club uses colour bands, Read Write Inc uses Sets and storybook colours, Little Wandle and Bug Club use phases, Twinkl uses levels, Sounds-Write uses units, Jolly Phonics uses seven groups.
ActiveLearn: Pearson's online platform, where schools using Bug Club Phonics allocate eBooks at the child's band.

If a book from school looks far too easy, it has done its job. The hard reading is the book you read aloud to them.

The words for words that cannot be sounded out

Every scheme has a set of these, and every scheme has its own name for them.

Tricky words: The term used by Little Wandle and by Letters and Sounds. Little Wandle starts with is, I and the in Reception Autumn 1, and adds said, so, have, like, some and come by the summer term.
Red words: The Read Write Inc term. Children are told to stop and think rather than sound them out.
Green words: Also Read Write Inc. Words that can be read with the sounds taught so far, so the opposite of a red word.
Harder to read and spell words: The Essential Letters and Sounds term for the same idea.

The parent move is identical whichever name your school uses. Tell your child the word, carry on, do not let them grind. There is nothing in it to work out.

The vocabulary your scheme uses and nobody else does

Fred Talk: Read Write Inc. Fred is a toy frog who only speaks in sounds. Fred says c-a-t, the children say cat. It moves from aloud, to a whisper, to Fred in your head, which is silent blending.
Special friends: Read Write Inc for digraphs and trigraphs: two or three letters making one sound. Children find the special friends first, then sound out the rest.
Bouncy and stretchy sounds: Essential Letters and Sounds. Bouncy sounds, b d g k p t, are said short and crisp. Stretchy sounds, m s f l n r v z, are held. Both are said with no uh on the end.
Initial Code and Extended Code: Sounds-Write. The Initial Code is eleven units taught in Reception; the Extended Code is around 49 units across Years 1 and 2, covering vowel digraphs and alternative spellings.
Linguistic phonics: The Sounds-Write approach: start from the sound and ask how it is written, rather than starting from a letter and asking what it says.
Alternative spellings: The Year 1 work in most schemes. One sound, several ways of writing it, so the vowel in rain also appears as ay and as a-e.

The words about the check in Year 1

Phonics screening check: Taken in June of Year 1, one to one with a teacher. Forty words read aloud. Year 2 pupils who did not take it, or did not meet the standard, take it too.
Pseudo words: Twenty of the forty are made up, printed beside a small alien. They cannot be recognised from memory or guessed from a picture, which is exactly the point: they test decoding and nothing else.
Threshold mark: The mark needed to meet the standard, published each June. It has been 32 out of 40 for many years, though it is set annually rather than fixed. Your headteacher must report your child's score to you by the end of the summer term.

The words about the system

SSP: Systematic synthetic phonics. The approach England's primary schools follow, and the reason the sounds arrive in a set order rather than alphabetically.
DfE validated: A programme on the Department for Education's approved list. Little Wandle, Read Write Inc, Bug Club Phonics, Essential Letters and Sounds, Twinkl Phonics and Sounds-Write are all in use in English schools on this basis.
Letters and Sounds 2007: The older framework that most schemes descend from, and the origin of the phase numbers. It was removed from the validated list in May 2021 because, in the DfE's words, it "isn't a full Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme because it doesn't provide the support, guidance, resources or training needed." The phases themselves were not the problem.

The words for what comes after decoding

Fluency: Reading at a comfortable pace without visible effort. It is built by reading easy text quickly, not hard text slowly.
Prosody: Reading with expression, so that a question sounds like a question. Little Wandle gives this a whole read of the three.
Comprehension: Understanding what was read. It sits on top of decoding, and is also built by the books you read aloud to your child, which can be far harder than anything they can read alone.

Which of these you can safely ignore

Most of them, honestly. You will never need to say phoneme out loud, and your child does not need you to use the technical words at all.

The ones worth keeping are the four that change what you do at home: decodable, tricky word, digraph, and whatever your scheme calls blending. Those four tell you why the book is easy, which words to simply tell your child, which letters to point at as a pair, and what to say when they get stuck. Working out which scheme your school uses gets you the rest.

Where to go next

If a term turns up that is not here, it is almost certainly your scheme's private name for something on this page. Ask the teacher which of these it maps onto and the answer usually takes ten seconds. If your school uses Read Write Inc, the Storybook and Book Bag Book difference is the first thing worth reading.

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

Common questions

What is a phoneme?

A single sound in a word. Cat has three phonemes and lamp has four, and the count of sounds is often different from the count of letters.

What is a grapheme?

The letter or letters used to write one sound. In duck, the ck is one grapheme, and a sound can be written with one, two, three or four letters.

What is the difference between a digraph and a blend?

A digraph is two letters making one sound, as in shop. A blend is two consonants making two sounds side by side, as in stop, where you can hear both.

What are tricky words?

Words that cannot be worked out from their sounds, such as said and the. Read Write Inc calls them red words and Essential Letters and Sounds calls them harder to read and spell words.

What is Fred Talk?

The Read Write Inc name for blending, using a toy frog who only speaks in sounds. It starts aloud, becomes a whisper, then becomes Fred in your head.

What is the difference between a Storybook and a Book Bag Book?

In Read Write Inc the Storybook is read in school across the week and the Book Bag Book comes home. They are different stories built from the same sounds and green words.

What does decodable actually mean?

That a book uses only sounds a particular child has already been taught. It describes the fit between a book and one child, not a quality of the book itself.

What are the three reads?

In Little Wandle, a book is read three times in school in one week: for decoding, for expression and for understanding. The home read is the fourth, which is why it looks easy.

What is the phonics screening check?

A one to one check in June of Year 1 where a child reads 40 words aloud to a teacher. Twenty are real words and twenty are made up.

What are alien words?

The made-up words in the screening check, printed beside a small alien. They exist because they cannot be recognised from memory or guessed, so they test decoding only.

What is a phase, and does every school use them?

A phase is a stage in the progression, numbered 1 to 6 and inherited from the 2007 Letters and Sounds framework. Read Write Inc uses Sets instead, Twinkl uses levels and Sounds-Write uses units.

What does SSP stand for?

Systematic synthetic phonics, the approach England's primary schools follow. It is the reason sounds are taught in a set order rather than alphabetically.

Do I need to use these words with my child?

No. Your child hears the right vocabulary at school, and the terms are for your benefit when you are reading a bookmark or a reading record.

Which terms actually change what I do at home?

Decodable, tricky word, digraph and your scheme's word for blending. Those four explain why the book is easy, which words to simply tell them, which letters to point at as a pair, and what to say when they stall.

Put the terms to work in a real story

Choose your school's scheme and your child's level, and we build a decodable story around their name using only the sounds they have already been taught.

Make a story First book free. No card needed.