4 Step Phonics App

[Mario Roby]

Before reading the following step-by-step guide to teaching phonics, it is advisable to read the previous article in this series, which introduces readers to the key principles and terminology of the method.Read our parents' guide to phonics

Most phonics programmes start by teaching children to see a letter and then say the sound it represents. Children are often taught the letters S,A,T,P,I,N first, so that they can sound out a wide variety of words (e.g. sat, pin, pat).

Children are taught how to blend individual sounds together to say a whole word. They will start with CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words such as sit, pan, tap, before moving on to CCVC words (e.g. stop, plan) and CVCC words (e.g. milk, past).

Once the children have learnt individual letter sounds, they will start learning to read and write digraphs. They will learn consonant digraphs (e.g. ch, sh, ng) and vowel digraphs (e.g. ea, oo, ai). Then they will move on to sounding out whole words such as hair, moon, chin etc.

The aim now is to support children to become more fluent readers and accurate spellers. Children will begin to learn more complex spelling rules such as prefixes, suffixes and silent letters. They should continue to practise reading on a daily basis to develop speed, fluency and comprehension.

Teachers should be aware that teaching decoding skills early on is essential for all learners, as it prevents them from falling behind later. Even if a child lacks background knowledge or vocabulary (for example, a multilingual learner), they still need to develop the word recognition skills that will support decoding.

The aim of this step is to help early readers understand that words are composed of smaller units of sound (phonemes). The focus for this part of the lesson should be the new sound that you will be blending, reading, and spelling that day, but can include previously taught sounds.

In this step, students are explicitly introduced to sound-spelling patterns and have an opportunity to review sound-spelling patterns, also known as phoneme-grapheme associations, that have already been taught. This helps them develop their automatic association of letters to sounds, which is foundational for reading and writing. This is a teacher-led activity, as you will need to explicitly introduce concepts and listen for correct pronunciation.

Use sound-spelling cards to introduce new sound-spellings and use letter/sounds cards to review previously taught sound/spelling correspondences in the words. Practice with no more than 20 cards daily to avoid overwhelming students. When introducing a new sound/spelling correspondence, you may also teach/review/reinforce letter formation in this step.

Move between routines based on student needs, providing more support as you introduce new sounds and less scaffolding and support as students become more independent. When you hear an error, provide quick and positive error correction that supports students rereading the word and arriving at the correct pronunciation, instead of giving them the answer and moving on.

Use the words blended in step three to develop the quick and effortless reading of words. Use consistent signals to cue students to respond by chorally reading the words so that one or two students do not rush or dominate the activity.

Decodable texts provide an opportunity for students to practice and apply newly acquired phonics skills and develop fluency. As students move through steps five and six, they become increasingly independent in their application of taught skills.

Third step: After students have whisper-read and have chorally read each page in the book (or sentences), the teacher randomly calls on individual students to take a turn reading a sentence or two aloud while the rest of the class reads along by tracking the text with their finger. Reread the entire text in this manner. After this step, students will have read the text in various ways three times. It is then appropriate, and necessary, to have students respond to literal questions about the text. This teaches students that we read to gain meaning from the text. As part of their response, students should show which sentence or page supports their answer by physically touching the supporting text. This teaches an important comprehension skill of finding the answer in the text.

In this step, students practice the skills they built during steps one to five. Word work allows them to apply sound/spelling patterns by writing, building, manipulating, and sorting words. These activities should provide opportunities for students to both encode and decode words.

Dictation offers opportunities for encoding and provides a simple formative assessment to help guide instruction. You can also incorporate additional word work activities, such as word sorts or practice with spelling patterns, into small group or individual practice time.

Similar to blending, there are different dictation routines that are more or less scaffolded. For more detail, see page 219 for Sound-by-Sound Dictation and p. 230 for Whole Word Dictation in the Teaching Reading Sourcebook.

Incorporating instructional materials and practices based on the Science of Reading can transform your literacy teaching and help all your students learn to decode and encode regardless of their ability, reading level, or background.

Teaching phonics is essential to helping struggling readers learn how to read. But how do we know how to teach phonics? Here is an overview of how to teach phonics step by step to give your students a strong phonetic decoding foundation.

The phonics method of teaching reading has been in debate for decades but is finally being more and more accepted as essential in education. Phonics research shows that when students are directly taught phonics patterns and rules, especially struggling students, they are much more likely to read with fluency as they enter older grades. Learning to read with phonics gives students the tools they need to confidently approach, decode, and then orthographically map new words.

Teaching phonics makes students better decoders. When students can phonetically decode words, reading is less effortful. Thus, they are able to focus on the meaning of the text instead of decoding words. Follow these steps for how to teach phonics and you will empower your readers!

If you are looking for how to teach phonics to struggling readers, this right here is it! Phonics instruction for our lower readers should follow a clear, systematic sequence and should be directly and explicitly taught. Learning to read passively or by exposure does not work for our struggling readers. They need structure and support!

You start at the smallest word part (letters) and works up. Once students have strong letter knowledge, you move on to blending small single-syllable words, and then combining those syllables into longer multi-syllabic words.

In other programs, phonics sounds are spontaneously taught as they are encountered in natural reading. Our lower readers, however, need phonics sounds to be taught in an organized, sequential way. Their brains have a hard time organizing and storing phonics knowledge, so organizing and presenting it in an organized manner is helpful to them.

Explicit phonics instruction means the teacher clearly shows the letter(s) and says the sound that they make to the students. There is no guessing or discovery, but there is complete clarity and direct phonics knowledge being taught.

Phonics skills are developed in a specific order (remember the systematic instruction we talked about above?). The skills build off of each other, so when you follow the correct sequence, learning new phonics patterns comes more easily.

How to teach phonics for beginners starts with letters. You can teach letter sounds at the same time you teach letter names. There is an order of teaching phonics letters and sounds that helps students learn the letters most efficiently.

I want to put an emphasis on teaching vowel sounds. Learning vowel sounds is crucial to reading, as every single syllable in every word has a vowel sound and most syllables contain a vowel. We want students to know the short vowel sounds AND long vowel sounds, and to know them very well.

Start with v-c words. What are v-c words? The smallest and most simple form of a word we can blend. v-c words start with a vowel and end with a consonant, and always have the short vowel sound.

Next comes phonics patterns! Now that students are able to blend sounds together to make words, they can apply that skill to words with phonics patterns. I have a Phonics Intervention Binder with interactive activities that cover EACH phonics pattern you can check out here, plus you can download these FREE phonics flashcards and a phonics chart (pictured above) to help you!

Words with 2 or more consonants together at the beginning of the word (or syllable), end of the word (or syllable), or both. These words are called CCVC, CVCC, or CCVCC words. Sometimes they are also called consonant clusters.

Digraphs are when two letters join together and make one sound. So a consonant digraph is two consonants that make one sound. The main consonant digraphs we teach are th, sh, ch (along with tch at the end of some words), wh, and ph in the upper grades.

Vowel digraphs, or vowel teams, are two vowels that come together and make one sound. The vowel digraphs are ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, oo, oi, oy, and au. Ow and aw are also often grouped with vowel digrpahs because they make similar sounds. Ui and ew are two more vowel digraphs typically introduced after the others.

You teach the letter sounds, then you use those sounds to decode simple words. Then you teach phonics sounds, and then decode words with those phonics sounds. Those first 4 steps were actually teaching students how to read syllables. Now that they are able to read simple regularly spelled syllables and syllables with phonics patterns, they can apply that knowledge to decoding multisyllabic words (which are made up of all of the simple words they have been learning).

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