How To Use this Site
Begin by assessing your learner’s needs and engage in daily practice with sounds, sight words, the Big Sounds Pack and the 10 phonics steps. Follow our 10-step process and make the most of the teaching strategies provided. Utilize our extensive range of resources, including teaching videos, stories, posters, PowerPoints, Google Slides, flashcards, games, and small books. Practice each step until your learner achieves comfort and fluency.
Quick Start
1
Go to Teaching & Practice and click on Phonics Steps 1-10.
2
Start with Step 1 and move quickly through until work becomes more challenging. Always begin with the teaching video.
3
Work through Sight Words, the Big Sounds Pack, and Playing With Sounds (P.A.) along with the steps.
OR
See the detailed guidance below to determine your learner's exact starting point.
Prerequisites and Assessment
Your learner should already know most of the letter sounds. If your learner needs a little more practice go to the letter sounds page. Your learner also needs to be able to rhyme, identify the first, middle and end sounds in words, blend (What does /c/, /a/, /t/ say? It says cat.) and segment (What are the sounds in cat? They are /c/, /a/, /t/).
Quick Checks to find what your learner needs to learn and practice
- Use the Playing With Sounds (Phonemic Awareness P.A.) Check to quickly check where your learner might need practice.
- Use the Beginning Sight Words Check List to make sure your learner either knows or learns all these words easily and automatically.
- Use the Big Sounds Pack Check List to record which sounds from the Big Sounds Pack your learner already knows and go through the rest of the sounds as you go through the 10 Steps. This pack includes letter combinations like -igh, ank, and oo. These do not need to be learned in any specific order. (Print Big Sounds Pack back to back.)
- We recommend beginning readers start with Step 1. If you have a more advanced reader, use the Phonics Quick Check to indicate where in the steps you may want to start with your learner.
- If the learner needs to learn the letter sounds, go to The Alphabet: Learning 26 Letter Sounds.
Work on the 10 Steps in order
The 10 Steps
Begin with Step 1 and move quickly through the steps until your learner does not read the words automatically.
or
Use our Phonics Quick Check to see which steps have already been mastered.
Watch the video to introduce and teach each skill. Click on the box in the lower right of the video to make it full size.
Explore the other resources in the teaching section including written stories from the teaching videos, PowerPoints, visuals, tips and more.
Purchase a Pack to print! Choose from the many options including lists, games, activities, and little books to practice and play with until your reader is fluent with this skill!
Include Spelling Every Time.
Reading and spelling go hand in hand. Sounds to print (spelling) is as important to reading as print to sounds (reading). Spend time spelling the words, phrases and sentences the learner is working on. See the Spelling section for more information. If the learner can read and spell the mixed skill lists and small books quickly and smoothly they are ready to move on!
Check the Unique Letter Combinations and Situations page for help with questions that come up as learners notice unknown letter combinations like -tch or -igh and ask questions like “Why is there a letter e at the end of nerve?”
Daily Foundational Practice Alongside the Steps
Playing With Sounds
Playing with Sounds: Hearing, Manipulating and Working with Individual Sounds is the Foundation of Reading and Writing. (This is also called Phonemic Awareness, abbreviated as P.A.)
- All learners should practice Playing With Sounds, (hearing and working with individual sounds). We need to be able to hear each sound in a word, blend sounds together to make a word, pull the sounds apart, and change sounds in words quickly and easily in order to read and write. This is a critical skill and is often a root cause of reading difficulty.
- We recommend looking at the Big Playing With Sounds P.A. Practice Packet which includes many exercises at multiple levels of challenge that should be mastered by the end of grade 2.
- Use the Playing With Sounds (Phonemic Awareness) Check to quickly check where your learner might want to start.
/a/ Using backslashes means the sound the letter makes, not the name of the letter. The sound for the letter t will be written /t/. The sounds for the word mat will be written /m/, /a/, /t/.
Sight Words and Big Sounds Pack
Go through the Big Sounds Pack and Sight Words along with the Steps:
- After the Quick Check, go through unknown Sight Words with our sight word packs (link at bottom of the Sight Word Page) as you work through the steps.
- After the Quick Check use the Big Sounds Pack (print Back-to-back) to practice known sounds and add new ones as you go through the steps. The Big Sounds Pack includes letter combinations like sh, -ng, -igh, and -tion.
Strategies for Teaching and Learning
The Strategies for Teaching and Learning page includes many strategies including 95% Accuracy: We learn quickest (and learning is more permanent) when we are 90-95% correct, and only 5-10% of what we are doing is new. Work on automaticity and speed with known skills while introducing new ones. Huge benefits to this site are the opportunities to practice target skills to automaticity through controlled activities where the learner can be 90-95% correct, master the skill quickly, and move on to the next. Go to the Strategies page for other effective teaching and learning practices.