Phonics, Part One

If you can’t spring for the Saxon Phonics program, you can improvise on your own. Here is a sample progression for teaching phonics. The only real materials you need are pencils and paper, some index cards or magnetic letters, and patience.

• Teach the names of the letters, and how to write them, upper and lowercase. Some children do better learning all uppercase first, and then lower, and other do best learning both together. By the way, there is a great computer program you can buy which allows you to create your own handwriting worksheets. You can do print or cursive, and customize it with words or spelling rules your child is learning, and his or her name, or really anything you want! It can be found at www.startwrite.com A great multi-sensory approach to help learn letter shapes is to write them on a table in shaving cream or salt on a cookie sheet. You could also have them shape letters out of playdough ropes. This helps the information to go in to the brain through more senses, so it is retained more easily.

• Teach the sounds of the letters. Start with the regular consonant sounds: b, c (as in cat), d, f, g (as in goat), h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q (which always goes with u and sounds like kw), r, s (as in snake) t, v, w, x (which sounds like ks) y (as in yellow) , and z.

• Teach the vowel sounds. Each vowel has two sounds. First teach the short sounds as in apple, elephant, igloo, ostrich, and umbrella.

• Now show them how to blend those consonant sounds with the short vowel sounds to make words like am, is, it, if, us, on, up, an, and, bad, dog, hug, kit, lip, mad, not, pig, run, top, van, wig, quit, Bob, Jan, Max, Dan, Jim, Sam, and so on.

At this point it is fun and very helpful for solidifying these sounds to play the phonics riddle game. Ask your child to say the word bat without the b (at). Then put a c on the beginning (cat). Take off the t and put on a p on the end (cap). Another great game is to make little index card letters (or use magnetic letters on a cookie board) to make as many words as you can. Have your child write down each word he/she makes. Then have him/her read the list to you. It is amazing how many 3-letter words they will find and will be able to read!

• Next is regular consonant blends, where you hear both letter sounds, like br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr, bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl, st, str, and so on. Great words to use for this are: brag, crib, frog, grip, trot, blip, clasp, flag, glad, plum, slug, stamp, strap.

• Now, I would teach the first set of “sight” words. These are words that can’t be sounded out and must be memorized. They are also words that appear frequently when you read and write. The first group is: the, said, of, were, what, you, love, friend, was, are. If you think your child is interested, it is valuable to have them memorize the spelling of these words. Make flash cards for each word, and if you want to, handwriting practice sheets. Have the child say the word, say each letter as he or she is looking at it, spelling out loud, or writing it, and then say the whole word again.

• Now do the other vowel sound- long or “name sounds” as in acorn, equal, island, orange, and unicorn. I usually do this by teaching the following “open” words (they end with a vowel, and therefore the vowel has the long sound) I, a, be, me, he, we, no, go, so, hi. Now is also the time to introduce the concept that the letter y is sometimes a vowel. At the end of some words it has the long I sound (such as by, my, dry, cry, and so on) and if it’s found in the middle of a word, it usually sounds like short I, such as the word myth.

• Next, I teach the silent e rule. I write down and read these pairs of words and ask the child to describe the pattern: kit/kite, bit/bite, Sam/same, cut/cute, strip/stripe, grip/gripe, glad/glade, rat/rate, slim/slime, and so on. The “magic e” at the end of the word changes the vowel sound, but does not have a sound of it’s own. If your child is a visual learner, you can write the silent e shorter and lighter than the other letters, to make a visual reminder that it is silent. The coding sign is drawing a diagonal line through the e to show it doesn’t have a sound.

• Then, teach the consonant digraphs. A digraph is two letters whose sound together is different than individually. These digraphs are: sh, th, ch, and ph. Words to use are: she (open-ends with a vowel, so the vowel sound is long) ship, shot, shape (silent e), thin, this, that, thump, chop, chip, chat, chum, chest, phone (silent e again), graph.

Now your child can read most of the Step Into Reading type books. These are great for boosting confidence, when they can read a whole book independently, they really see themselves as readers. If you want to get them reading book even earlier, the “Bob Books” are a wonderful resource for creating confident kids. They are very short and repetitive, but children get so thrilled and proud when they have success at reading a whole book. The Bob Books use consonant-short vowel-consonant words and basic sight words such as said, and, was, and the.