Children entering Phase 4b will be able to represent each of 42 phonemes by a grapheme, and be able to blend phonemes to read CCCVCC words and segment CCVCC words for spelling. They will know letter names and be able to read and spell some tricky words.

This phase aims to teach common word endings including suffixes. of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words. Some grammatical awareness is also helpful here: just knowing that the regular past tense ending is spelt -ed is not enough – children also need to be aware that the word they are trying to spell is a past tense word. Without this awareness, they may, for example:

Spell hopped as hopt, played as plaid, grabbed as grabd and started as startid – perfectly accurate phonemically, but not correct.

Conversely, once they have understood that the -ed ending can sometimes sound like /t/, they may try to spell soft as soffed, unless they realise that this word is not the past tense of a verb.