Teaching to read with phonics

Phonics: In Practice | Reading Rockets

Phonics instruction teaches common letter-sound relationships, including sounds for common letter patterns, so that readers can apply them in decoding unfamiliar words.

The purpose of phonics instruction

In this section:

Only a small percentage of English words have irregular spellings and letter-sound relationships. This means that nearly all English words can be read by applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships and blending sounds together to form a whole word. To learn more, see How Words Cast Their Spell.

Being able to decode words effortlessly (convert spelling into speech sounds) means children are able to focus their attention on comprehending what they read.

Beginning phonics lessons

Regardless of grade, start phonics lessons with consonant letter sounds that are easy to pronounce and less often confused with similar letter sounds. This enables students to master one letter sound before having to learn a similar letter sound. For example, students may confuse the letter sounds for t and d.  Since the letter t is more common, instruction should introduce t many lessons before introducing d. 

Learning sounds for letters is basically rote learning, and for rote learning, the use of memory cues can be very helpful. For instance, for short a, children can learn that the letter a looks like an apple with a broken stem, and short a represents /a/ as in apple. Multi-sensory activities, such as repeatedly tracing the vowel letter and saying its sound, are often useful as well.

Start explicit phonics instruction with short vowel words because these vowels have one predictable spelling (with few exceptions) and are the most commonly occurring vowel sounds in English. Because the short vowel sounds are highly confusable, they should be taught individually, not all at the same time.

Phonics Terms

• Phoneme
  The smallest unit of sound in our spoken language. Pronouncing the word cat involves blending three phonemes: /k/ /ae/ /t/.
• Grapheme
  A written letter or a group of letters representing one speech sound. Examples: b, sh, ch, igh, eigh.
• Onset
  An initial consonant or consonant cluster. In the word name, n is the onset; in the word blue, bl is the onset.
• Rime
  The vowel or vowel and consonant(s) that follow the onset. In the word name, ame is the rime.
• Digraph
  Two letters that represent one speech sound (diphthong). Examples: sh, ch, th, ph.
• Vowel digraph
  Two letters that together make one vowel sound. Examples: ai, oo, ow.
• Schwa
  The vowel sound sometimes heard in an unstressed syllable and that most often sounds like /uh/ or the short /u/ sound. Example: the "a" in again or balloon. All English vowels have a schwa sound.
• Morpheme
  The smallest meaningful units of language. The word cat is a morpheme. Not all morphemes stand alone as words; some are attached to words, usually as affixes. These are called bound morphemes. Examples include: non-, -est, -ing, -er, -ion.

Kindergarten phonics lessons

Phonics lessons in kindergarten focus on students becoming automatic at letter naming, single-grapheme letter sounds, and reading single-syllable words with short vowel spellings. Instruction may include common digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh, and ck).  For some kindergarten students, articulating some consonant sounds may be difficult, but this does not prevent them from reading and comprehending words with those sounds.

To learn more about when kids learn different consonant sounds, see this Speech-Sound Development chart.

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First grade phonics lessons

In first grade, phonics lessons start with the most common single-letter graphemes and digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh, and ck). Continue to practice words with short vowels and teach trigraphs (tch, dge). When students are proficient with earlier skills, teach consonant blends (such as tr, cl, and sp).

Ensure students understand the difference between blends, digraphs, and trigraphs: that each letter in a blend retains its own sound, while the letters in digraphs and trigraphs represent one sound. 

In first grade, we may also include two-syllable words with short vowel sounds (e.g., cat∙fish, pic∙nic, kit∙chen). Inflectional endings such as ing, er, and s would also be included. When students have mastered short vowel spelling patterns, introduce r-controlled (e.g., er, ur, or, ar), long vowel (e. g., oa, ee, ai), and other vowel sound spellings (e.g., oi, aw, oo, ou, ow).

Teaching of common syllable types is also very useful for first-graders. By the end of first grade, typical readers should be able to decode a wide range of phonetically regular one-syllable words with all of these letter patterns and syllable types, including one-syllable words with common inflectional endings (e.g., sliding, barked, sooner, floated).

Teaching syllable types in first grade

Teaching children about syllable types is useful because vowel sounds in English vary, and knowledge about syllable types can help children determine the vowel sound of a one-syllable word. Later, once they have learned some rules for dividing long words, children can also apply their knowledge of syllable types to decode two-syllable and multisyllabic words.

Instruction in syllable types should focus on children’s abilities to classify words correctly (e. g., sort one-syllable words that are closed from one-syllable words that are not closed) rather than on children’s abilities to recite rules or definitions. However, it is very important for us to present clear, consistent definitions of the syllable types, in order to avoid inadvertently confusing instruction.

The six syllable types common in English are closed, silent e, open, vowel combination, vowel r, and consonant-le. The chart below lists these syllable types along with their typical vowel sounds, definitions, some examples, and some additional comments.

The specific order in which syllable types are taught can vary substantially, depending on the phonics program being used. However, the closed syllable type is usually taught first, because closed syllables are common in English, and it is virtually impossible to write even a very simple story for children that contains no closed syllables. Conversely, consonant-le syllables always occur as part of two-syllable (or longer) words, so that syllable type would often be taught last.

Syllable Type (Synonyms)	Vowel Sound	Definition	Examples	Comments
Closed	Short	Has only one vowel and ends in a consonant.	splash, lend, in, top, ask, thump, frog, mess	The main prerequisite when children learn the closed syllable type is that they first have to be able to classify letters as either vowels or consonants.
Silent e (magic e)	Long	Has a –VCE pattern (one vowel, followed by one consonant, followed by a silent e that ends the syllable)	plane, tide, use, chime, theme, ape, stroke, hope	Words like noise, prince, and dance are not silent e, even though they end in a silent e, because they do not have the -VCE pattern; noise has a –VVCE pattern and prince and dance have a -VCCE pattern.
Open	Long	Has only one vowel that is the last letter of the syllable.	he, she, we, no, go, flu, by, spy	This syllable type becomes especially useful as children progress to two-syllable words. For example, the ti in title, lo in lotion, and ra in raven are all open syllables.
Vowel combination (vowel team)	Varies depending on the specific vowel pattern; children must memorize sounds for these individual vowel patterns.	Has a vowel pattern in it (e.g., ay, ai, aw, all, ie, igh, ow, ee, ea).	stay, plain, straw, fall, pie, piece, night, grow, cow	Vowel patterns do not always involve two vowels but can also consist of a vowel plus consonants, if this pattern has a consistent sound (e.g, igh almost always represents long /i/; all almost always represents /all/). Also, some vowel patterns can have more than one sound. For example, ow can represent long /o/ as in grow or /ow/ as in cow. For these patterns, children learn both sounds and, when decoding an unfamiliar word, they try both sounds to see which one makes a real word.
Vowel r (bossy r, r- controlled)	Varies depending on the specific vowel r unit; children must memorize sounds for these units (e.g., ar, er, ir, or, ur).	Has only one vowel followed immediately by an r	ark, charm, her, herd, stir, born, fork, urn	Does not include words in which the vowel r unit is followed by an e (e.g., stare, cure, here) or in which the r follows a vowel combination (e.g., cheer, fair, board). These words can usually be taught as silent e (in the first case) or vowel combination (in the second).
Consonant-le	Schwa	Has a –CLE pattern (one consonant, followed by an l, followed by a silent e which ends the syllable)	-dle as in candle, -fle as in ruffle, -ple as in maple, -gle as in google, -tle as in title, -ble as in Bible	Consonant-le syllables never stand alone; they always are part of a longer word. Also, they are never the accented syllable of a longer word.

Video: Learning ‘b’ and ‘d’ and Reading Short Vowel Words

In this video, reading expert Linda Farrell works with Aiko on a common letter reversal — confusing the letters ‘b’ and ‘d’. Ms. Farrell coaches Aiko to look at the letters during b/d practice and to look at the words while she works with Aiko to read short vowel words accurately. See more videos here: Looking at Reading Interventions.

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Second grade, third grade, and beyond

As students enter Grade 2, they should be learning to decode a wide range of two-syllable and then multisyllable (i.e., three syllables or more) words. Instruction in decoding these longer words should include attention to common syllable division patterns and syllabication rules.

Common syllable division patterns

To decode words of more than one syllable, children need a strategy for dividing longer words into manageable parts. They can then decode the individual syllables by applying their knowledge of syllable types and common letter-sound patterns, blending those syllables back into the whole word.

The chart below provides some useful generalizations for teaching students how to divide (syllabicate) two-syllable words with various common patterns, in order to decode them. These generalizations also are useful for decoding multisyllabic words, those with three or more syllables.

Pattern	Generalization	Examples	Comments
Compound	In a compound word, divide between the two smaller words.	back/pack, lamp/shade, bed/room, bath/tub, work/book	To be a true compound word, each of the smaller words must carry meaning in the context of the word (e. g., carpet is not a compound word, because a carpet is not a pet for your car or a car for your pet).
VCCV	If a word has a VCCV (vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel) pattern, divide between the two consonants.	or/bit, ig/loo, tun/nel, lan/tern, tar/get, vel/vet	There is an exception if the two consonants form a consonant digraph (a single sound), as in bishop, rather, gopher, or method. In these cases, treat the word as a VCV word, not VCCV (see below).
-CLE	If a word ends in a consonant-le syllable, always divide immediately before the -CLE.	ma/ple, stum/ble, i/dle, nee/dle, gig/gle, mar/ble, tur/tle
-VCV	If a word has a VCV (vowel-consonant-vowel) pattern, first try dividing before the consonant and sounding out the resulting syllables; if that does not produce a recognizable word, try dividing after the consonant.	hu/mid, ra/ven, mu/sic, go/pher; plan/et, com/et, tim/id, bish/op, meth/od, rath/er	To recognize the correct alternative, the child needs to have the word in his/her oral vocabulary. If the student does not recognize the correct alternative, we can have them try both options (e.g., hu/mid with a long u vs. hum/id with a short u). Then, if necessary, just tell the child the correct pronunciation of the word, with a brief explanation of its meaning.
Prefix	In word with a prefix, divide immediately after the prefix.	pre/view, mis/trust, un/wise, re/mind, ex/port, un/veil	See below.
Suffix	In a word with a suffix, divide immediately before the suffix.	glad/ly, wise/ly, sad/ness, care/less, hope/ful, frag/ment, state/ment, na/ture, frac/tion	Depending on its origin, the base word in a word containing prefixes or suffixes will not always be a recognizable word. However, the key point is that, when dividing a longer word, prefixes and suffixes are units that always stay together as patterns; never divide in the middle of a prefix or in the middle of a suffix.

Continue explicit phonics instruction through second grade with increasingly complex spelling patterns. By third grade, shift explicit phonics instruction mostly to explicit morphology instruction. Students move from learning about letter/sound relationships to sounds for prefixes, suffixes, roots, base words, and combining forms.

Vocabulary and spelling can be integrated with instruction in reading words. For example, as children learn to read the root geo, they learn that it means earth and that it will have a stable spelling across related words such as geology, geologist, geological, geography, geographic, etc.

Although many word-reading skills are developed by the end of Grade 3, children may be learning some of these skills even beyond Grade 3. Developing an understanding of etymology (word origins) is one example of this more advanced kind of skill for reading words.

For instance, j is pronounced /h/ in words of Spanish origin, and this pronunciation is retained in English words borrowed from Spanish, such as jalapeno and junta.

As another example, words that end in –ique such as boutique, antique, and mystique are borrowed from French and retain the French pronunciation for this pattern, /eek/.

Children do not need to learn sounds for all letter patterns in every language, but if they understand that many words in English are borrowed from other languages, and that these words often retain at least part of their pronunciation in the original language, this can benefit their word reading as well as their spelling.

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Phonics lesson planning

Lesson plans for explicit phonics instruction start with a clear, achievable objective. An objective may be learning two to three new consonant sounds, one new vowel sound, or a new phonics concept (e.g., in one-syllable words, ck spells the sound /k/ after one vowel letter and only at the end of a word). Lesson plans will likely span many days and include multiple layers of instruction and practice.

Lesson plans can start with a review and include previously taught concepts throughout the lesson. Lessons pull forward everything taught previously.

New concepts (e.g., letter sounds) are explicitly taught before being practiced.  All practice should include an “I do, We do, You do” practice.  In “I do,” model the activity.  In “We do,” guide the group through practice.  In “You do,” have students practice individually and model proficiency. 

Build scaffolded instruction and practice into activities. Each subsequent practice activity contains less scaffolding until students are independently proficient. Practice activities move from isolated skills to skills that are more complex. For example:

• Students read and spell letter name and letter sounds in isolation.
• Students read words sound by sound.
• Students read word chunks and word patterns.
• Students read whole words, sounding out only to resolve reading errors.
• Students spell words sound by sound, and practice spelling chains where only one letter changes from one word to the next (e.g., sap to lap to lip to lit to slit)
• Students may learn word meanings to understand sentences and passages, but vocabulary instruction is typically outside the phonics instruction block.
• Students read decodable phrases, sentences, and passages once for accuracy and again for fluency.
• Students spell short decodable sentences.

Have students read individually for accuracy and again for fluency while reading lists as well as sentences and passages. This need not be included in every activity.

Assess each student’s skills individually before introducing new concepts. When individual students have not mastered the objective, use your best judgment. Should the group move forward? Should the individual student receive extra practice? The answer will vary based on the composition of the group and the proportion of students in it who are struggling.

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Sample beginning phonics lessons

Phonics lessons flow naturally out of phonemic awareness activities. For example,

• In phonemic awareness, ask students to segment words with the sounds short a, /m/, /p/, and /t/.
• Explain that the letter m spells the sound /m/, etc.
• Have students individually practice saying letter names in isolation.
• Have students individually practice reading letter sounds in isolation.
• Introduce three to four irregularly spelled high-frequency words to learn by sight.
• Ask students to segment words with the sounds short a, /m/, /p/, and /t/, and then arrange letter tiles to spell the segmented words.
• Demonstrate how to point to each letter and say the sound. Then blend the letters to read words (called "touch and say" or "touch and read").
• Have students individually practice sounding out three to five words, then re-read the words they sounded out previously.
• Ask individual students to read a list of words (comprised of only the sounds explicitly taught and practiced to date). 
  • Students read once for accuracy and again for fluency.
  • When a student misreads a word, guide the student through sounding out the word. Then the student re-reads the whole group of words to the end by reading accurately.
• Lead students in a review of the irregularly spelled high-frequency words taught earlier in the lesson and from prior lessons. Learn more in this article, A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words.
• Guide students through reading phrases, sentences, and (eventually) passages comprised of  decodable words with the sounds explicitly taught and practiced to date along with some irregularly spelled high-frequency words.
  • Students read once for accuracy and again for fluency.
  • When a student misreads a word, guide the student through sounding out the word. Then the student re-reads the whole phrase, sentence, or portion of the passage to the end by reading accurately.
• Students spell letter sounds, decodable words, and short decodable sentences.

Beginning phonics lessons introduce only three or four new consonant sounds and only one new vowel sound in a lesson. Continue with this lesson until all students in the group are reading at 95–98% accuracy on a first attempt. Move to the next lesson, introducing another three or four consonant sounds and another new vowel sound.

Children in a general education classroom will vary widely in how easily they acquire word recognition skills. We should make use of flexible groups to meet the needs of children who can move ahead quickly in their word-reading skills, or conversely, the needs of those who require more practice.

Children who consistently perform at a high rate of mastery in their word recognition skills can focus on other valuable literacy activities such as independent reading and writing, while we are working with flexible groups who require continued phonics instruction.

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Phonics lesson routines

Include instructional routines in lesson activities. Instructional routines are repeatable routines used to practice a new skill.

For example, guide the reading group to use "touch and say" to read a list of words containing the lesson’s focus letter sounds. The steps for the activity are:

1. Model "touch and say" with one word.
2. Have the group use "touch and say" to read three words together.
3. Have each student use "touch and say" to read five words and then re-read the list without "touch and say."
4. Ask the whole group to read the same five words chorally. Use this routine daily during the phonics lesson as the activity that precedes reading whole words.

Instructional routines reduce students’ memory load. Students do not have to remember the steps in a routine while simultaneously remembering the new concept. As a result, routines provide support and stability and improve the pace of the lesson.

Moats, L. and Hall, S. (2010). LETRS Module 7: Teaching Phonics, Word Study, and the Alphabetic Principle (Second Edition). Longmont, CO: Sopris West.

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Instruction for all: the value of a multisensory approach

Teaching experience supports a multisensory instruction approach in the early grades to improve phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension skills. Multisensory instruction combines listening, speaking, reading, and a tactile or kinesthetic activity.

NOTE: Research does not yet have definitive answers about how multisensory instruction works. Literacy expert Tim Shanahan offers this perspective in his blog post, What About Tracing and Other Multisensory Teaching Approaches?.

Phonics instruction lends itself to multisensory teaching techniques, because these techniques can be used to focus children’s attention on the sequence of letters in printed words. As such, including manipulatives, gestures, and speaking and auditory cues increases students’ acquisition of word recognition skills. An added benefit is that multisensory techniques are quite motivating and engaging to many children.

Multisensory activities provide needed scaffolding to beginning and struggling readers and include visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile activities to enhance learning and memory. As students practice a learned concept, reduce the multisensory scaffolds until the student is using only the visual for reading. Employ the multisensory techniques to fix errors and then practice without the scaffold.

Examples of multisensory phonics activities:

1. Dictate a word using say, touch, and spell. Students say each sound in the word and place a manipulative (e. g., a tile with a letter or letter pattern on it, such as sh, ch, ck) to represent each sound in the word.

   For example, when we say fin, students move the letter tiles for f, i, and n, to spell the word, while at the same time saying and stretching the sounds orally. If we then say fish, students replace the tile with n on it with one that has an sh.

   Subsequent examples of words in the chain could be wish, wig, wag, bag, brag, and so on. The activity should use only letter sounds/pattern sounds that children have been taught.

   Letter tiles also should represent sounds at the phoneme level. For example, fish would be spelled with three tiles (f, i, sh), because it has three phonemes, whereas brag would be spelled with four tiles (b, r, a, g), reflecting four phonemes.

   Place ending spelling patterns and beginning consonants (or consonant blends) on cards.  Have students work in pairs and arrange as many words as they can on a table. Do a table walk and have each pair read the words they created. Give other teams an opportunity to create a new word.
    

2. Organize spelling around the vowel letter. Assign a gesture to each vowel sound. Dictate a word and have students make the gesture for the vowel sound in the word.
    
3. Assign a gesture to /sh/ and /ch/. Dictate words. Ask students to individually make the gesture associated with /sh/ or /ch/ when they hear those sounds in a word.
    
4. Paddle pop: Teach letter clusters such as ing and ink. Write these clusters on card stock and staple to popsicle sticks.  Dictate words and ask students to pop up the paddle containing the letter cluster in the word.
    
5. Sounding out words:

• Single syllable "touch and read": Students touch each letter with a finger or pencil point and say the letter sound, then sweep left to right below the word and read the word.
• Multi syllable touch and read: Students touch each syllable with a finger or pencil point and say the syllable, then sweep left to right below the word and read the word. 

Include two or three of these multisensory activities in each lesson: speaking, listening, moving, touching, reading, and writing. They fully engage the brain and make learning more memorable. These activities can be fun games or part of a daily practice routine.

Multisensory activities are the scaffold for early practice. As students become proficient in the new skill or concept, reduce and then remove the multisensory scaffolds.

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Adapting instruction for different readers

Research supports explicit phonics instruction for beginning readers and for struggling readers whose reading skills did not develop as expected. Two areas that affect reading acquisition are working memory and executive function. 

Working memory refers to the memory we use to hold and manipulate information. For example, when a beginning reader sounds out a word, the student holds the letter shapes, sequence, and sounds in working memory to first sound out the word, then blend the sounds and read the word. Information held in working memory is fragile and held briefly (approximately 10 seconds) unless actively engaged.

If not attended to, the information in working memory vanishes. While this is true for everyone, some of us sustain information in working memory for seconds longer, some for less time. There are techniques that help students practice attending to information in working memory. See the articles, 10 Strategies to Enhance Students' Memories and Making It Stick: Memorable Strategies to Enhance Learning.

Executive function refers to the part of the brain that governs attention, impulse (starting and stopping), organization, reasoning, processing speed, and other higher order functions. It is the area of the brain that gets things done. It is also the last area of the brain to fully mature (mid to late 20s). Learn more: Executive Function Fact Sheet.

To support students who struggle with working memory, attention, executive function, or processing speed issues, the following instructional adaptations can be helpful:

Itemized instructions

Hand out itemized instructions, and discuss what is expected in each step. Teach students how to check each step in a process off the instruction sheet to track work completed. Students with working memory and executive function weaknesses benefit greatly from learning how to use lists.

Intermittent instructions

Whenever possible, provide intermittent instructions so students do not need to remember a long list of steps. Remind the class to check any itemized instructions.

Instructional routines

Use repeated routines to practice skills and complete assignments. Repeated routines are not boring to students. They reduce the memory load on students and enable them to focus on new skills or concepts.

Repeat-safe environment

Build into the explicit instruction, practice, and assessment an opportunity to repeat instructions or information. It can be as simple as, “Anyone need me to repeat that?” or “Can I repeat the instructions for the next steps?” or “Remember. You can always ask me to repeat something.” This creates an environment in which students with attention or working memory weaknesses feel safe asking for instructions or information to be repeated.

Rehearsing

Rehearsing can include having students state something aloud before writing. It can also include briefly practicing an activity that will later be assigned as homework. By rehearsing, a procedural memory or episodic memory is created which later supports students when they attempt to work independently.

Note taking

Explicitly teach note taking and build it into classroom routines. Every student will benefit by note taking as a study skill, as a stage of writing, and as an organizational tool. There are different note taking strategies depending on the task. Explicitly teach those note-taking strategies, and build them into lesson procedures. If students learn multiple note-taking strategies, you will need to review with them which one to implement in each setting, especially for students who struggle with working memory or executive function.

Writing aids

• Provide a list of words pertinent to the writing assignment which have new or difficult spellings. This reduces the load on working memory by helping remove an obstacle to writing.
• Provide an itemized rubric of the things the writing assignment must contain and explicitly teach the class to review their writing for each item on the list. Students with working memory weaknesses cannot easily review their writing for multiple things (e.g., check punctuation at the same time as checking for at least three supporting details and the reasons they support the topic sentence).

Organizational and place-keeping strategies

Being organized and knowing how to break a complex task into subtasks are not always innate skills. This is especially true for students with working memory and executive function weaknesses.

We support all students by taking time to explicitly teach how to be organized: how to organize a binder, how to break a complex task into logical steps, how to allocate time on homework, etc. This requires more time at first, but as the school year progresses, less time is required. Students will benefit from this skill set through the rest of their academic careers.

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References

Barkley, R. (1997). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 65–94.

Gathercole, S. and Alloway, T. (2008). Working memory and learning: A practical guide for teachers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Giedd J., Blumenthal J., Jeffries N., Castellanos F., Liu H., Zijdenbos A., Paus T., Evans A., & Rapoport J. (1999). Brain development during childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal MRI study. Nature Neuroscience 2(10), 861–3.

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How to Teach a Child to Read with Phonics

by Katherine Wood

My first baby, Phonics Hero, had already taught thousands of children how to read. But the game changed when I had my second baby: my very own child! Now the everyday practicalities of how to teach a child to read with phonics began to play out in my own home.

My 3.5 year old daughter, Nieve, is now reading simple words on her own. My mum friends are all clamouring to know – what’s our secret? So here it is, my step-by-step recipe for how to teach a child to read with phonics.

From the Get-Go:

Nursery rhymes

Knowledge of nursery rhymes enhances children’s phonological sensitivity which in turn helps them to learn to read.”

Bryant, “Nursery Rhymes, Phonological Skills and Reading”, 1989.

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise and ‘play with sounds’ in spoken language. If a child is good at playing with sounds in spoken words, they will easily transition to manipulating sounds in written words. you can read further with this deep dive into oral blending and segmenting. The main point is: nursery rhymes – do lots of them!

Stories EVERY night

By reading to your child, you will be enhancing their phonological awareness skills. Look out for those stories jam-packed with rhyme. In addition to enhancing your child’s phonological awareness skills, you will also be demonstrating what a good reader looks like: pitch, tone, accent and the pleasure that comes from reading!

Step 1: Introducing the Sounds:

Play with rhyme

When Nieve turned three we began step 1 of reading, rhyming. The timing is different for every child, so if your child is resistant, don’t push it. Just come back to it later. The last thing you want to do is turn them off reading at an early age.

As Nieve and I would walk to swimming lessons, we’d play the rhyming game:

If your child comes up with nonsense words which rhyme, for example ‘dat’ rhyming with ‘cat’, that’s perfectly acceptable – it still demonstrates they understand the concept.

Start identifying initial sounds of words

Before your child can move onto reading with letters, they need to understand that there are unique sounds in words, for example ‘cat’ is not one sound, but is made up of /c/, /a/, and /t/ (in phonics we denote a sound like this: /s/).

Some ideas:

• What does your name start with? (My daughter always enjoys telling me what her friend’s names start with.)
• As you pull out the week’s shopping – What’s the first sound of each of these vegetables?
• I spy with my little eye something beginning with /c/? (A great one for a car journey. )
• I went to the shops to buy a dolphin! Then your child repeats it, adding another /d/ item on the end. Keep adding to the /d/ shopping list until you are completely stuck!

Step 2: Oral Blending:

Oral blending is the ability to glue sounds together to produce a word. As a pre-reader, it’s done without letters and just the sounds. I would say to my daughter, “what am I saying /ch/ – /air/?” Watch us demonstrating:

It’s critical to master this stage before moving onto anything more complicated. I tried to progress Nieve onto blending with letters too early, and we had a big set-back. So we put the magnetic letters away and carried on orally blending for several months longer. This is a critical foundational skill. Stick with it.

Step 3: Introduce the Letters and their Sounds:

Before I go into how to teach a child to read with phonics, a comment on readiness from our Educational Psychologist (also Nieve’s grandfather!).

Like learning to walk, learning to read happens for children at different times. Nieve was an early talker and a girl – two major advantages in learning to read.

If you are teaching a child to read at home, you don’t want to make it into a negative experience. Keep it light, don’t be too pushy and be willing to give up and come back to it later.”

Michael Wood, Educational Psychologist

Firstly, you’ll want to purchase some lowercase magnetic letters (stay away from uppercase – it will only confuse things).

The first step is to take four single letter-sounds and learn that the letter ’s’ represents /s/. We did that for the first four sounds:

Some of the games we played:

• Simply pointing to the letter on the fridge and saying the sound.
• Mummy hiding one and Nieve telling me what was missing.
• Nieve being the teacher and mummy getting lots wrong (she loves telling me the answer).
• Blind-folding Nieve and asking her to feel and find the /s/ sound. As expected, it was my turn afterwards – and I got oh so many of them wrong!

If your child gets stuck on a particular sound, give them an object on which to anchor it, something they are familiar with, such as a relation or a favourite toy. Neither for love nor money could Nieve remember the /c/ sound when I presented her with the ‘c’ letter. I would remind her “it’s like mummy’s name” (my name begins with a ‘k’, but right now it doesn’t matter – it’s the same sound as the letter ‘c’).

Once she was telling me these sounds as quickly as she as she could tell me her own name, I introduced another four sounds, bringing the total to eight.

Step 4: Moving onto Blending Her First Words:

Once she had eight sounds under her belt and her oral blending was quick, Nieve was ready to move onto blending with letters. Blending is the ability to glue sounds together to produce a word (read up on blending). It’s critical that a child learns to blend early in the process (lots of early learning centres do all 26 letter sounds of the alphabet before moving onto blending, which can and should be done much earlier).

When Nieve first blended, it was like all my Christmases had come at once! I managed to capture the first time she blended:

Did you notice how I only changed the first sound to begin with? This lessened the “cognitive load” (how much information a child can handle in one go). Think of learning to read like learning to drive. My first driving lesson wasn’t a three-point-turn but driving in a straight line down the road. Likewise, with learning to read, we want to ease a child in, bit by bit.

Here is a wordlist using those first eight sounds. Stick to one group at a time, doing lots of repetition before moving on to the next group.

Step 5: Practise, Practise, Practise!

When learning to drive, once you had the basics, it became about clocking hours on the road – practising and applying what you learned. Likewise, practising is the next step when you teach a child to read.

Practise with worksheets

Nieve loved practising her blending skills using our worksheets; she’d do the same one over and over again. She loved them because she had success really quickly; they were single words and those which only used the sounds she knew.

You can get your hands on the whole set of over 200 worksheets for only US$20. That will last your child until they are seven!

Play Phonics Hero

Phonics Hero has 850 online games which systematically take a child through reading and spelling with the 44 sounds of the English language, all wrapped up in an exciting superhero storyline. It builds children’s skills: from the sounds, to reading single words, to spelling and – finally – conquering sentences.

Have a go with your child. You can get a free 7 day trial of Phonics Hero here:

You don’t want to hand the child your tablet and just let them ‘go for it’ – like you would a kid’s game. Be on hand to work through the words if they get stuck. Here is Nieve playing the first blending game:

Did you notice how on the third word, I corrected her when she tried to guess? I don’t want her to get into the bad habit of guessing at words: strong readers don’t guess.

Use decodable books

Decodable book are texts that contain specific knowledge which the students have been taught. This knowledge consists of phonics (letter sound code), the blending strategy and eventually irregular, high frequency words often known as tricky words.

Santina DiMauro, Primary School Teacher

By using a decodable book your child will get to show off their reading skills – just like a real reader! If you are searching for some books to buy, ensure they start with single words or very, very basic sentences. Speech Pathologist, Alison Clarke has a great list.

And They’re Off…

Once your child starts achieving success from the process of learning to read, they’ll want to do it again and again. Remember, when you teach a child to read you need to be really precise with the words you are expecting them to read. Phonics Hero will hold your hand through the introduction of each group of sounds, so stick to what we introduce and when we do it. I made this video to briefly explain the systematic, synthetic phonics approach that we use:

What I Learned About How to Teach a Child to Read at Home

Firstly, it’s important to say that this hasn’t been a straightforward path. Because of what I do every day, I knew the roadmap, but Nieve didn’t always stick to my directions! What the process really highlighted to me is that you can’t force readiness – be ready to give up and come back to it later. Secondly, I can’t emphasise enough the importance of pre-reading skills – when oral blending clicked, everything came together. And finally, it’s not about a ‘phonics lesson’, but finding the opportunities to learn while she eats her /p/, /a/, /s/, /t/, /a/.

Good luck! I’d love to hear your experience in the comments below.

Author: Katherine Wood

Method of analytical phonetics in teaching reading

- Come on, put down your name.

Filipok said:

- Hwe-i-hvi, le-i-li, pe-ok-pok.

Leo Tolstoy “Philippok”

Having learned the alphabet does not mean that he has begun to read fluently. Children have to memorize what sounds letters express in various combinations. Given the number of exceptions, the process of learning to read is being delayed. To know how to teach, let's look at the main methods for developing reading skills and the benefits of analytical phonetics.

In England in the nineties of the twentieth century, along with native English schoolchildren, children of parents who had moved to live in the British Isles from other countries began to appear in schools. Teachers soon noticed the fact that immigrant students were better at reading non-native English than native English. Teachers conducted an experiment by introducing the method of inductive phonetics into the teaching of reading in their native language. The result was impressive! Since then, a huge number of studies have been carried out that have proven the effectiveness of this method of teaching reading, many teachers in England began to resort to the method of inductive phonetics. Now it is impossible to imagine the educational process in English-speaking countries without this technique.

There are two methods of teaching reading in the methodology: deductive and inductive phonetics . The difference between deductive (analytic phonics, analytical phonics) and inductive phonetics (synthetic phonics) is that learning to read is based on the process of transition from word to sound, and not vice versa. Also in deductive phonetics there is no mixing of sounds into words, as inductive. Using the method of analytical phonics, it is far from always possible for a teacher to be sure that students will be able to read similar words with an approximately similar set of letters or sounds. As a rule, students just memorize the reading of the learned words and intuitively analyze other words while reading. Inductive phonetics is a kind of speed reading technique. It is used in schools in England at the initial stage of teaching children.

The use of inductive phonetics does not preclude the use of deductive phonetics. In English, there are words that cannot be divided into sounds, and students need to memorize them using visual memory - these are sight words. These include:

• frequently used words;
• words that are not read according to the general phonetic rules (one, two).

1. Children try to guess how a word is read after reading a group of similar words.
2. The emphasis is on the first sound of the word.
3. Slow learning - one sound per week is introduced.
4. No logical order for introducing new sounds.
5. Exceptions to the rules are dealt with, although not all, but only the main ones.
6. Parsing the correct spelling of a word is often skipped.
7. Illustrations are used for hints, the child guesses what word is in front of him and “reads” it from the picture

It should be noted that the methodology is suitable for Russian students who are just starting to learn English at school. In EMC for children, it is proposed to combine both approaches - to enter letters and sounds before reading them in words, but also to guess many rules based on reading groups of words with the same letter combinations. Children are different, use the methods of analytical and synthetic phonetics so that everyone can achieve excellent results.

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Review of the main methods of teaching reading

For adults, reading is a natural process. But for most children, learning to read requires perseverance and effort. Adults rarely remember how difficult it was to learn to read. Pronounce the letter one after the other, keeping their sequence in mind and trying to figure out what the word is, then read the next word in the same way. ..

Yes, very often a child takes a lot of effort to read even a single word, and when he reads the next, he often forgets the previous one. Try turning the text upside down and read it. How much of what you read do you remember? Is it easy and interesting to read in this way? .. But at first a child reads like upside down, he is not yet used to grasping several words at once and understanding the meaning of what he reads, so he remembers little of what he read, and therefore reading for him at first - rather some kind of fun than getting new information.

Many methodologists are busy trying to come up with a method by which it would be easy to teach a child to read fluently and grasping the meaning. Many parents want their child to learn to read quickly and well, and they think that this depends on intelligence - but in fact it is not. Ability to learn to read is little dependent on IQ. Moreover, research has shown that children who have difficulty learning to read often have an IQ above average. .. will come to naught. This is not true. Success in reading in the first grade is largely determined by the level of reading in the 11th grade. Good reading is all about practice, so those who are better at reading first read more overall. Thus, over the years, the difference only increases. Learning to read well in the early years helps develop an important lifelong habit of reading.

Let's take a look at what reading programs currently exist and what results they lead to.

Phonetic method

Phonetic method is a system of learning to read, which is based on the alphabetical principle and whose central component is the teaching of relationships between letters or groups of letters and their pronunciation. It is based on teaching the pronunciation of letters and sounds (phonetics), and when the child accumulates sufficient knowledge, he proceeds first to syllables, then to whole words.

The phonetic method is divided into two branches:

1. The systematic phonetics method is a program that systematically teaches phonetics from the very beginning, usually (but not always) before being allowed to read whole words. The approach is most often based on synthesis: children are taught the sounds of letters and train them to connect these sounds. Sometimes these programs also include phonetic analysis - the ability to manipulate phonemes.
2. Method of internal phonetics are programs that emphasize visual and semantic reading, and in which phonetics is introduced later and in less quantity. Children in these programs learn the sounds of letters as they analyze familiar words. Another way of identifying words (by context or pattern) in these programs is given more attention than the analysis of the word. Usually there is no set time period for practicing phonetics. The effectiveness of this method in terms of the main parameters is lower than that of the method of systematic phonetics.

Linguistic method

Linguistics is the science of the nature and structure of language; her observations and conclusions are used in methods of teaching reading. Children come to school already with a large vocabulary, and this method suggests teaching them to read familiar words, especially those that are used most often. First, children are encouraged to learn to read in words that are read as they are written. Reading such words, the child learns to determine the correspondence of honey with letters and sounds.

Whole word method

This method consists in teaching children to recognize words as whole units and not explaining the letter-sound relationships. Training is based on the principle of visual recognition of whole words. The child is not taught either the names of the letters or the letter-sound ratio; they show him whole words and pronounce them, that is, they teach the child to recognize words as a whole, without dividing them into letters and syllables. After the child learns 50-100 words in this way, he is given texts in which these words are often found.

This method was very popular in the 1920s.

"whole-language" method

Somewhat similar to the whole-word method, but it relies more on the child's language experience. For example, children are given a book with a fascinating story and are asked to read it. Children read, encounter unfamiliar words, and children are encouraged to guess the meaning of these words with the help of context or illustrations, but not through the pronunciation of these words aloud. In order to stimulate a love of reading, children are encouraged to write stories.

One of the goals of the "whole-language" approach is to make reading enjoyable. One of the characteristic features of this method is that phonetic rules are not explained. The relationship between letters and sounds is learned through the process of reading, in an implicit way. If a child reads words incorrectly, they do not correct him. The philosophical aspect of this teaching is that learning to read, like learning a spoken language, is a natural process and children are able to comprehend it themselves.

Zaitsev's method

Zaitsev determined the warehouse as the unit of the language structure. A warehouse is a pair of a consonant with a vowel, or a consonant with a hard or soft sign, or one letter. Zaitsev wrote these warehouses on the faces of the cubes. He made the cubes different in color, size and sound they make. This helps children feel the difference between vowels and consonants, voiced and soft. Using these warehouses (each warehouse is on a separate face of the cube), the child begins to compose words.

This technique can be attributed to phonetic methods: a warehouse is nothing more than a phoneme (with the exception of two warehouses: "b" and "b"). Thus, Zaitsev's technique teaches to read immediately by phonemes, and at the same time explains the letter-sound correspondence - not only combinations of consonants and vowels are written on the faces of the cubes, but also the letters themselves.

Moore's Method

The basis of learning is an interactive environment. Moore begins by teaching the child letters and sounds. He takes the child into a laboratory where there is a special typewriter that makes sounds or names of characters when you press them.

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