The Phoneme/Grapheme Chart

The sounds that we hear (Phonemes) can often be written (grapheme) in a number of different ways.

Many of the graphemes we use do not make obvious sense especially to developing readers or writers.

The phoneme/grapheme code is a way of helping readers and spellers to quantify the number of possible ways of representing a particular sound.

For example if the speller wants to write the word graph, writing the g –r –a is not a problem but the reader may remember that graph is not written with the usual /f/ grapheme but can’t remember how the grapheme was formed. Gh is NOT an obvious combination for the /f/ sound but when the person looks at the phoneme/grapheme code, it narrows the many combinations of letters to just the ones most commonly used.

This helps to build up the memory of the written code.

English is a patchwork of languages and this brings with it such a variety of graphemes.

Words from other languages typically carry their spelling patterns into English. So, for example, the spelling “ch” represents different sounds in words drawn from Germanic (cheap, rich, such), Greek (chemist, anchor, echo) and French (chef, brochure, parachute).

These charts do not try to include every possible grapheme that a reader/writer may encounter but they do include the most likely ones.

Having Code Charts available for pupils to use when reading (decoding) and writing (encoding) can be a very useful tool.

Simple phoneme/grapheme chart

Bouncy consonant sounds b c d g h j p qu t w x y ch k wh ck

Stretchy consonant sounds f l m n r s v z sh th ng nk

Bouncy vowel sounds a e i o u ay ee igh ow

Stretchy vowel sounds oo oo ar or air ir ou oy hook look

44+ Phoneme/Grapheme Charts Consonant sounds b c d f g h j l m n p qu ball can dog fish goat hat jam lemon man nut pin queen bb k dd ff gg g ll mm nn pp ck ed ph ge le mb kn ch gh dge lm gn lf mn pn ft

r s t v w x y z sh th ng ch red sun tap van win box yes zip shop thin sing chin ch rr ss tt ve wh zz ti nk tch loch wr se s ci tu c se si ti ce ch te sci

Vowels sounds a e i o u ay ee igh ow rat peg pin on rug stay see high show ea a o a-e y i-e o-e ie ho oo ai ea ie oa aw ou ea ie i o au e-e ei y oe ey e ough eigh e-e aigh

ue oo ar or air ur ou oy ire ear ure glue book car for hair fur found boy fire hear sure oo oor are ir ow oi u-e ore er ough ew aw ou au