Level 1 concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Level 2. The emphasis during Level 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Level 1 is divided into seven aspects. Each aspect contains three strands:

Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination),

Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) 

Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension).