PHASE 1 GUIDE · NEW ENTRANT · YEAR 0
A parent and teacher guide to phase 1 of Ready to Read Phonics Plus — what it means, what's taught, and how to help at home.
🌱Kākano is the te reo Māori word for seed — the very beginning of the Phonics Plus growing metaphor (seed → seedling → sapling → tree). It's where every reader starts: learning that letters stand for sounds, and that sounds blend into words.
Kākano is typically where children work during their first months at school (new entrant / Year 0). But phases are about readiness, not birthdays — some children arrive already blending, others need two terms on their letter sounds. Both are normal. Phonics Plus is progression-based — children move up when they're ready, not by age, so treat year levels as a guide only.
Kākano covers the single-letter sounds (taught in small groups, roughly in this order), the five short vowels inside CVC words like cat, pin and cup, and the first digraphs — pairs of letters that make one sound:
The real milestone of Kākano isn't naming letters — it's blending: pushing /s/–/u/–/n/ together smoothly to read sun. Once that clicks, everything else in reading is built on top of it.
✅ Signs your child is ready to move on
When you help at home, use the sound — /m/ says mmm, not em. Sounds are what blending is built from; names come easily later.
Say /a/ as in ant, /e/ as in egg — try not to add an 'uh' on the end (/m/ not muh). Cleaner sounds make blending much easier.
Point under each letter, say the sounds slowly, then say them fast: sss–uuu–nnn… sun! Ten words a day beats one long session a week.
'I spy something starting with /sh/…' in the car, at the beach, in the supermarket. It's free and kids love it.
If they're stuck, cover the picture and help them sound it out — then celebrate: 'You read that all by yourself!'
Every Kākano mystery on KiwiABC practises one focus pattern from this phase, inside decodable clue sentences — so the reading practice feels like detective work, not drill. Browse the Kākano mysteries →
Every Kākano mystery practises one pattern from this phase inside a decodable whodunit. The first ones are free — no account needed.
Open the Kākano mysteries →