Teach the ‘u’ grapheme and /u/ phoneme with our u phonics resources for Reception. These worksheets, games and practical activities give pupils opportunities to recognise ‘u’, practise letter formation and use the grapheme when blending words for reading and segmenting words for spelling.
Use the resources when introducing ‘u’ in Phase 2, revisiting previous learning or giving pupils additional practice. Find more activities in our complete collection of Phase 2 phonics resources, or explore teaching materials for Phases 1 to 5 on our main phonics resources page.
In Phase 2 phonics, pupils learn to connect the written grapheme ‘u’ with the /u/ phoneme heard in words such as up, sun and mud. They practise recognising ‘u’ in print, recalling the phoneme it represents and listening for /u/ within spoken words.
As pupils become familiar with the correspondence, they can apply it alongside previously taught graphemes when reading and spelling. Clear modelling and frequent opportunities to revisit ‘u’ help pupils develop quick and secure recall.
Our u phonics worksheets, games and activities can be used to reinforce the grapheme–phoneme correspondence in a range of contexts. Pupils can practise:
Resources can be used during whole-class phonics teaching, with adult-led groups, for independent practice or as additional support for pupils who need more opportunities to revisit ‘u’. They can be selected to complement your school’s chosen systematic synthetic phonics programme.
Once pupils have learned ‘u’, they can combine it with other known graphemes to read words such as up, sun, mud and cup. Word-building games, phoneme frames and decodable activities help pupils practise looking at the graphemes from left to right and blending the corresponding phonemes to read the whole word.
For spelling, pupils can listen to a word, say it slowly and segment it into its individual phonemes. They can then select a grapheme for each phoneme they hear. Applying ‘u’ in both reading and spelling helps reinforce the relationship between the written grapheme and spoken phoneme.
Pupils can practise forming lowercase ‘u’ alongside learning the phoneme it represents. Tracing, guided writing and practical mark-making activities provide repeated opportunities to develop the correct movement and build confidence when writing the grapheme independently.
Explore our full collection of Phase 2 phonics resources for worksheets, games and activities covering other graphemes, blending and segmenting. You can also visit our main phonics resources page for resources covering the wider phonics teaching sequence.
In Phase 2, the grapheme ‘u’ is introduced as a representation of the /u/ phoneme heard in words such as up, sun and mud.
Using ‘u’ with other graphemes taught by this point in Phase 2 allows pupils to read and spell words such as up, sun, mud, cup and cut. Words used for practice should only contain grapheme–phoneme correspondences pupils have already learned.
Grapheme-matching games, phoneme spotting, word building, phoneme frames, blending activities and letter formation practice can all help pupils learn ‘u’. Regular practice across reading and spelling gives pupils opportunities to recall and apply the correspondence in different ways.
