Frequently asked questions

Hearing rhymes and rhythm and learning to hear and discriminate sounds (vital phonic skills) should start at birth. In learning environments, the optimum time to teach phonics is from ages 4-7. Ideally, children should have successfully completed Stage 1 (learning how to hear and discriminate sound) before starting school. The subsequent 6 stages can then be taught in the following two years. Older learners who are low level readers will also need phonics.

No. Learners need a range of strategies that they can orchestrate together. Phonics is just one strategy children can use to help them read and write. It is a low-level strategy -one that they will not need to use much when they are able and confident readers and writers. Continue to ensure that your learners are offered a rich and balanced literacy programme with explicit phonics teaching as a small but integral part of their early literacy development.

Some children manage well with phonics being taught as it arises in their reading and writing. However, many children don’t. Research and experience has shown that for many children, especially boys, children from lower economic groups and those with English as a second language explicit teaching of phonics is necessary. Further, waiting for opportunities for the teaching of phonics to come up in their reading and writing is inconsistent and means that children can miss out on vital skills and knowledge that have not arisen. Furthermore, laborious attempts to make phonics ‘fit’ in the reading can put children off the story and lose meaning. By teaching the children the phonics skills they need outside of reading, the teacher’s role is then to encourage transfer, rather than try to teach everything all at once in the story..

Many pro phonics teachers say that we should teach phonics first before starting guided reading. I think that makes phonics too much the focus and deprives children of opportunities to learn the other three strategies. It’s important to start guided reading straight away.

New Entrants can cope well with learning phonics and graphic knowledge side by side. Guided reading gives them immediate opportunities to try out the strategies we are teaching them in their own reading. At Stage 2, which they start as soon as they begin school, they can get their mouths ready for the first sound of any unknown word and combining that strategy with the picture or context cue is usually enough to help them predict the unknown word correctly whilst also teaching them how to orchestrate two strategies.

In terms of when to teach high frequency words, as with phonics, have a set time to teach them in your daily literacy programme. It should be a much shorter lesson than phonics, just a few minutes using word charts, flash cards and songs. Then transfer the learning straight away to shared/guided reading/writing. In your planning, ensure there are opportunities for transfer and that the high frequency word will appear in the story you are reading and writing that day.

When New Entrants come into school, start teaching the phonics stages from day one, but also at the same time teach high frequency words through memorising. In this way, the brain is learning in two different ways (operating both upper and lower circuits). New Entrants need to develop both of the word level strategies (phonics and graphic knowledge). They need to develop two ways of learning to read words: both phonetically and by memorising the graphic patterns. High frequency words usually do not lend themselves well to phonetic learning anyway and these are the words children should learn by sight, rather than by sounding out. By the time the average New Entrant is ready to blend phonemes to read new words (three months after starting school) she could have already learnt at least 20 high frequency words and be reading quite a variety of little books.

Yes. The major difficulty for dyslexics in literacy is phonological weakness. Phonics is harder for dyslexics, but they will need it to be successful readers and writers. Ensure children with dyslexia have explicit phonics teaching and ongoing regular Stage 1 phonological awareness activities (especially rhyming). Lack of fluency is another difficulty for learners with dyslexia. Practise fluency with familiar word flashcards and word speed writing activities.

No. These children will certainly benefit from learning phonics skills. However, it is generally harder teaching phonics to older children, especially those who know they are behind, as they will have more confusion about what they can hear and see once they can read and write. Teach carefully, ensuring children are able to participate fully in each step before progressing to the next. In particular, ensure they can hear read and write the short vowel sounds.

You are right to be concerned about children who cannot rhyme or hear rhythm. These are vital phonics skills. However, you also need to start Stage 2 so that they are not further delayed in their reading and writing. You could start each Stage 2 lesson with a 3-4 minute Stage 1 activity, using these as a warm-up for the Stage 2 lesson. Also, include rhythm and rhyme activities where you can throughout the day. Start shared reading with a daily nursery rhyme, clap rhyming strings in the minute before the bell goes, incorporate rhythm activities into your music lessons, and clap simple patterns for the class to clap back to you. There are lots of ideas on how to teach rhyme in the book Developing Phonological Awareness.

Yes. Phonics will be very helpful. It may take longer to get through each stage – so be prepared to teach at the child’s pace. Teach each step of the lesson carefully. You may not get through each step in the lesson plan each day at the beginning of teaching a new stage. Ensure regular assessment so that you can see improvement, no matter how gradual.

1. Do some drilling – at the start and end of the lesson, go through the vowel sounds. Firstly by hearing : ‘First sound for ‘apple’ – yes it is ‘a’ – all say it together ‘a-a-a-a-. Now, the next question, first sound for ‘egg’ – yes it is ‘e’ (model it if the children give the incorrect phoneme) – all say it together ‘e-e-e-e’ and so on.

Then by reading: show the letter card for ‘a’. “Give me the sound for this letter”. (If they forget, ask them for the first sound for ‘apple’) ‘a-a-a-a-‘. Then show the ‘e’ letter card. “Give me the sound for this letter,” and so on. Once you have done the five vowel cards, mix them up and go at speed. Start and end each lesson with a vowel drill.

If five vowels at once are too many, just do two a day and build up to the five.

2. At writing, play ‘vowel tricking’. Say to the children to write ‘c’, leave a space for the trick letter, then write ‘t’ on their whiteboards. In the space for the trick letter, tell them they have to guess is it ‘a’ or ‘i’ in the word you are now going to give them. Say ‘cat’. Ask them to write down the letter for the sound they think it is which should go in the middle ‘a’ or ‘i’. (Make the sounds, not give the letter name.) Exaggerate the ‘a’ sound in the word if necessary.

3.It is important that you tell the children that they need to know their five vowel sounds. Have a little chart with their names and the vowel sounds and each day, each child can get up to five ticks by their name on the chart if they gave the correct sound when asked. Have a certificate when each vowel is mastered – so each child can earn up to five certificates, one for each vowel. Because it is a big deal and they need to know it is important to have these vowels by heart. With the vowels in particular, drilling and repetition does work in the end.

Teach a mix of Stage 1 and 2 activities. Everyday do three or four Stage 1 activities, and then do the hearing step of the Stage 2 lesson. For the Stage 1, activities, ensure you all recite a nursery rhyme everyday so they have some they know off by heart (no chart, do it orally and preferably choose ones with finger actions and use your voice or body actions to stress the rhyming words); and also do alliteration each day as this links to the hearing step at Stage 2. The alliteration can be as simple as having them recite a 3 or 4 word alliterative sentence after you a couple of times and then asking them what did they hear. Make the alliterative sentence match the phoneme you are teaching in the Stage 2 hearing step. You should then have time to choose 2 other activities from Stage 1 as well. For more ideas for Stage 1, look at Developing Phonological Awareness.

The central skill which children need at Stage 2 is how to hear the first sound. If they can hear that, it is a much easier step to teach them how to read and write it. So, just teach that and focus on ‘first sound?’ questions and activities. (Step 1, the hearing step, of the Stage 2 lesson plan). Do a different phoneme each day. After 29 lessons, 1 for each phoneme, do a Stage 2 hearing assessment. Ask them to give you the first sound of 29 different words, each representing a different phoneme. For e.g., ask ‘first sound for pumpkin, first sound for rat, etc. Once assessments show they can correctly give you the first sound of about 25 phonemes, then teach the complete Stage 2 lesson. Remember to be easy on yourself as the hardest children to teach are the low progress learners. Everything takes longer and needs to be broken down into steps that are manageable for them.

I don’t blame the children for feeling over phonics after two years – I would be too! I think the issue is to find out what exactly is the problem here. Is it that they are not blending and segmenting? Is it that they don’t know their short vowel sounds? Or their consonant digraphs and trigraphs? Or their letter/sound correspondences? Has there been any progress in the assessments and is what the assessments show they know being transferred to their reading and writing? If it is not, then the issue is transfer.

I wouldn’t think going on teaching the same phonics lessons will be helping. My suggestion is to find out exactly what the problem is and do some direct teaching of that. If it is transfer, do some work around transfer.

And remember, nothing beats extra time reading so if the children have enough phonics to read with, it might be better for them to use the time rereading their guided reading books with you or another adult helper because oral reading with quality feedback from an expert reader is the best way to move children who are stuck.

1. Do some ‘I say, you says’ – where the teacher claps out phonemes in words with 3 or 4 sounds and the children copy. After each word, ask the children how many claps/sounds the word had. After doing a few, challenge the children to clap the sounds for a word that the teacher tells but is not clapping for them to see if they can do it on their own.

2. Play phoneme fingers but tell the children first, before counting, how many fingers they are going to need and then the children have to work out the sounds onto their fingers. Because they know the number of fingers needed, half the work is done and they can concentrate on just working out the four sounds. Mix up words with three or four sounds.

3. Has the teacher done the advanced/refresher training? If so, I would also play the word stretching game taught in that session – ask children to stretch out all the sounds in a word like it was a rubber band. If they rush it or omit sounds, she should model first emphasising how to hear every sound.

4. Play Croaker. The children say ‘frog’ and the puppet says ‘fog’. The children have to tell the puppet the sound he missed out and exaggerate it when they say the word for the puppet to copy.

5. Play some ‘tricking’ activities for the children – say to the children I am going to sound out frog and sound our ‘f-o-g’ instead. Say to the children that you have tricked them and can they work out what the sound is that you left out? Then ask them to sound it out properly for you, with all four sounds.

6. Writing: Phoneme lines – tell the children the number of phoneme lines they need to draw on their whiteboards for the word they are going to spell. The children draw the lines and then they have to spell the word you give them, writing each grapheme on top of each phoneme line. As with the phoneme fingers game, half the work is done for them and they know how many sounds they are supposed to hear so they can focus on just hearing them.

I would always tell the children explicitly what the problem is. Tell them that they are really good at hearing words with three sounds, but I want them now to be as good as that when they are given words with more than three sounds, and that they have to listen really carefully to work out longer words because it will help their reading and writing. The Advanced Phonics course teaches two bridging stages to help children hear more than three sounds in a word before learning the Stage 5 digraphs.

Consider teaching some extra blending activities every day for a few weeks to give him more practise at developing this skill. Try some of the following activities: 

1) Stretch words: tell the children you are going to ‘throw’ a word into the air, they must ‘catch’ it with both hands. Hands together, slowly stretch hands apart as they stretch out the sounds of a word. (It is stretching so it will be ‘ccccaaaatttt’ rather than segmenting ‘c-a-t’)

 2) Then, you stretch the word, can they tell you what it is?

3) Try doing the robot with shorter breaks between sounds so each sound rolls into the next. This will help them blend.

 4) Try the robot and the above activities with words with only two phonemes, as this should be easier to do then 3 phonemes. For example, words (some of these are nonsense words) such as at, an, am, ot, ut, ip, in etc.

 5) Usually, I prefer to focus on hearing activities to teach blending, but I might also sometimes use reading activities using letter cards. Line up 3 letter cards c-a-t, and you blend the sounds together as you point to each letter. Let the sounds blend continuously, no gaps between phonemes. Once you have modelled this a few times, ask the children to blend with you. Then, ask a child to do the pointing of each letter as you blend the word (and they can decide the speed of the blending as this is fun for them). Then swop roles.

 6) With a word card, take another piece of card to cover the word and drag the card across it, unveiling each letter one at a time as you blend the sounds to say the word. This makes the blending process visual. Repeat together. 

7) Give model words to blend as an ‘I say, you say’ activity. You blend the sounds of a word, they repeat after you. Use hands to stretch words apart so it is a physical feeling of stretching as well as oral. Then you tell them, or ask them if they can tell you, what the word is. 

8) Concentrate on blending words in rhyming sets before you mix them up the sets. Blend all the ‘cat’ words, (but start with blending ‘at’).

 9) Tell the children you are going to blend a word and if they can guess what it is before you finish, they must join in with blending the rest of it. For e.g. you blend ‘ccccaaa’ and they help you finish with ‘ttttt’ (cat). If this is hard, tell them before you start that it is either going to be ‘cat’ or ‘dog’ so they only have to choose one of two.

I go for the formation method where the child is taught again and again how to form one of the letters (I go for ‘d’ – “open mouth, tall stick” – the child should articulate the process each time she writes it). If they are taught again and again how to form a ‘d’ and to talk through the process so they know how to do ‘d’ inside out, that helps a lot I find. A ‘d’ is formed by starting at the mid point of the letter, a ‘b’ is formed by starting at the top. As long as they are grilled into always starting a ‘d’ at the mid point, it tends to come right. The confusion is when they start both letters in the same place.

If you are not doing the ‘Magic Caterpillar’ handwriting and using the ‘open mouth’ vocabulary, then say ‘write c then a tall stick”. It is all about starting at the mid point of the letter.

It is the nature of some children’s memories that they can learn something well enough to go into their short term memory but need constant revision to get it into their long term or permanent memory. This is definitely one of those things and needs ongoing revision.

I don’t blame the children if they lose enthusiasm going over the same things again and again. In my own teaching, I teach Stage 5 lessons one cycle only because it does get boring doing the same thing again and again and it doesn’t usually work repeating the whole lesson. I use the Stage 5 assessments to tell me where the problems are (is it not hearing every sound in a word or is it forgetting some of the graphemes or is it both) and then I go back and just teach that. I find it is better to hone in on what they don’t get, using the same sort of methods but not in a full Stage 5 lesson, is more effective. For example, we might work on dictation or playing games such as Croaker. We might have phoneme finger races in teams to reinforce how to hear every sound in a word. I just think of ways to jazz it up and make it fun to teach whatever it is the assessments show me is lacking. I do the words from the book and add in other ‘nonsense’ words for fun and to reinforce the grapheme.

One thing, if the problem is that the children are not hearing every sound in a word, you might want to teach Pre Stage 5 before teaching Stage 5 for future classes. This is in the Advanced manual and more often than not, it is a good idea to spend a week or so on this stage before starting Stage 5 to give the children a gentle introduction to hearing every sound in a word. You don’t teach all of the sets – just enough for them to get the idea of hearing every sound and then move into Stage 5 properly.

I think to move onto Stage 6 you do need to be able to hear every sound in a word but if you don’t know every single Stage 5 grapheme that is not so bad and won’t impede progress at Stage 6. If I’ve spent ages on teaching it and still have a few children not knowing all the Stage 5 graphemes, I will take them to Stage 6 because I know they will come in time and sometimes you just need to move on.