10 Tips for Parents Teaching Phonics at Home

phonicsorg on March 29, 2024

Teaching phonics to kids is no easy feat. Reading and writing are complex skills that must be explicitly learned, practiced, and mastered over time if children are to become proficient readers. 

Whether your child is learning phonics in their classroom or you’re educating them from home, a consistent and proven phonics program can have positive outcomes. 

In this guide, we share practical tips on how parents can start teaching phonics at home—in ways that are proven to support kids’ development. Let’s dive in!

1. Create a Phonics Routine

The first thing you need to do if you want to teach phonics at home is to start an at-home phonics routine with your child. 

Consistency is important not only for children’s emotional development but cognitive development as well. Practice, routine, and clear expectations help children feel more comfortable and confident in their everyday lives. 

When learning something new such as phonics—even if it’s challenging—children benefit from daily routine. Whether it’s ten minutes or thirty minutes per day, a structured learning practice makes a big difference. 

2. Read Aloud With Your Child

Read books to your child regularly when they’re little. As they learn basic phonics skills, read with them, making a point to include them in the reading process. 

  • Let your child choose books they want to read with you
  • Welcome your child’s questions about the story and characters
  • Take turns reading and kindly correcting each other’s mistakes
  • Encourage active participation, using questions and real-world connections 

When you read to (and with) your child, you model fluency and reinforce positive reading experiences. Even when you might not notice it, your child is “absorbing” a lot of useful information from reading aloud with you.

3. Prioritize Letters and Sounds

No matter what you include in your child’s phonics education at home, make it a priority to practice letter-sound correspondence. 

This is the relationship between alphabetical letters and the sounds they represent in spoken language. It’s the fundamental basis of reading because essential skills like decoding rely on knowledge of letter sounds. To learn a few letter-sound teaching exercises, read this article from phonics.org.

4. Make Phonics Education Playful

Try playing some entertaining phonics games with your child to keep them interested and engaged. Kids typically learn best through play, so make this an opportunity to enjoy quality time together and strengthen those budding phonics skills.

For example, to focus on letter sounds, play games like “I Spy,” where you silently identify an item in your surroundings and give letter clues. For pineapple, you’d say: “I spy something that starts with <P>.”

5. Take a Multisensory Approach 

Leverage the use of multiple senses during phonics instruction to go beyond sight and sound. Ideas include:

  • Tactile objects (foam letters, alphabet tiles, writing in sand)
  • Auditory cues (alphabet songs, nursery rhymes)
  • Physical movement (jumping/clapping along with syllables, letter hopscotch)

Sensory phonics games are especially helpful for kids who hate sitting still or those who need a break from focused “work” at a desk.

6. Apply Phonics to Everyday Life

Use real-life situations as opportunities for phonics instruction. Ask your child to sound out words on restaurant menus, find a specific letter on a street sign, point at labels in the grocery store, and do other fun quests. 

7. Use Educational Technology 

Learning phonics isn’t limited to print. Thanks to the development of digital learning today, some educational apps and resources can enhance your child’s phonics learning. 

For kids who are digital natives, online phonics programs can be useful, beneficial, and fun. Put screen time to good use and choose a phonics app that implements proven instruction methods, engaging activities, and user-friendly experiences. 

To find online apps that help kids learn to read, check out our phonics program reviews from literacy experts.

8. Extend Patience and Encouragement 

Seeing your child progress in their phonics lessons is so exciting! It’s easy to provide words of praise when they’re doing so well. When a new concept or skill doesn’t come naturally, though, it’s even more important to extend patience to your child and offer encouragement. 

According to Havard’s Center on the Developing Child, consistently encouraging children to learn through curiosity, play, and social interaction can have a direct impact on the level of intrinsic motivation they experience into adulthood. So in addition to words of encouragement, model curiosity to your child and show them it’s okay to make mistakes when learning. 

9. Monitor Your Child’s Strengths and Weaknesses 

Every child has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to literacy development. Regardless of their skill level or expected abilities for their age, it’s important to monitor their unique experience. That way, you can notice which areas they need more support in.

Ensure your child has a reading assessment to understand where they’re succeeding and if they need additional support. Generally, children are assessed or screened for reading difficulties three times a year – at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Some children may require additional help and could be monitored more frequently to track progress and next steps. 

Some reading assessments are more reliable than others. The DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a reliable resource for this. Explore the DIBELS screening tips for parents and families. 

10. Give Your Child the Support They Need

Adequate phonics instruction provides a solid foundation for kids to become avid learners. When children know how to read and write effectively, the world is theirs to discover. With these tips, we hope you can better support your child’s phonics journey at home. 

An additional note: It’s worthwhile to acknowledge that sometimes, children may need more help than what we can offer as parents. If a student experiences underlying issues that result in reading difficulties—such as stress, learning disorders, or a behavioral struggle—those issues must be addressed. If you and your child’s teachers have tried everything but still notice little improvement, talk with a clinician or reading specialist. 

No matter where your child is on their path to literacy, you can learn more reading education tips from our parent resources at phonics.org. 

Phonics Intervention for Struggling Students

phonicsorg on March 22, 2024

Phonics is a must-have foundation for reading instruction—especially for children just learning to read. Even more importantly, kids struggling to read often benefit from explicit instruction through some type of phonics intervention. 

To help your child gain the knowledge and skills they need to become great readers, here are some things you need to know about phonics intervention.

What is a Phonics Intervention?

A phonics intervention is a specialized, targeted instructional program for people struggling to build essential literacy skills.

Typically, phonics interventions focus on reading concepts, building a solid foundation from the ground up. An intervention can be suitable for young children first learning to read or even older students who have yet to develop these skills. 

A reading intervention should focus on improving the weaknesses or skill deficits that a person has. Some interventions may need to focus on improving letter-sound correlations, while others may focus on blending letters and sounds together to decode or read words. All reading interventions should teach concepts explicitly and provide ample time for practice until the concept is mastered.  

There are several recommended characteristics of reading interventions that focus on phonics instruction:

  • Explicit: The phonics concepts, correlations, and rules are explained and modeled clearly by an instructor so the student feels free of ambiguity.
  • Systematic: Each new skill is introduced in a logical, proven sequence, beginning with the most basic one and then building upon each component. 
  • Cumulative: In addition to instruction being systematic (sequential), it’s also cumulative, meaning that while learning builds upon itself, the previous skills are continually practiced alongside new ones so that the student can achieve mastery.
  • Multi-Sensory: It’s common that students who need phonics intervention also need a different approach to learning sound-letter correspondences. Reading interventionists and educators often engage students in activities incorporating multiple senses—sight, sound, touch, and physical movement—to diversify learning experiences and encourage retention. 
  • Synthetic: This type of phonics focuses on using individual letters and sounds to read and spell words. This differs from the analytic phonics that uses ‘word families’. It has been shown to be the most efficient method of teaching children to read and spell. 

With these core principles built into a phonics intervention, students are more likely to achieve reading proficiency. 

How Phonics Interventions Work

Phonics or “reading” interventions work by providing struggling readers with the tools they need to overcome specific challenges, all within a supportive learning environment. 

Educators typically determine a child’s phonics intervention needs using assessments and observation. There are three tiers educators currently use to decide the required level of intervention.

Tier 1: Instruction is provided to the whole class using the explicit and systematic approach. Phonics screeners and benchmark assessments throughout the year can identify which students may be at risk of reading difficulties and who need more attention. 

Tier 2: Phonics instruction targets a small group of struggling students who would benefit from more specialized teaching. Children are often grouped based on their skill level.

Tier 3: Instruction must be given at the individual student level, sometimes incorporating an IEP (individualized education program) for students with specific learning disorders such as dyslexia.

In all three tiers, effective phonics instruction focuses on developing the following skills.

Phonemic Awareness 

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate segments of sound in spoken language. The most important phonemic awareness skills are: 

  • Blending: Combining letter sounds to read, or sound out, a word. 
  • Segmenting: Breaking a word into its individual phonemes (sounds).
  • Syllabication: Breaking a longer word into its syllables or parts. 

These skills can be practiced orally (just sounds) or with letters. Practicing these skills with letters has shown to be almost twice as effective when teaching someone to read and spell. 

Sound-Symbol Correlation 

Once a child has an awareness of phonemes and how they’re different, they can begin to learn sound-symbol correspondence. This is the connection between speech sounds and letters. This important skill requires a lot of practice and modeling. Through this, the brain develops connections between visual and verbal components (also known as Paired Associate Learning)—a sophisticated and incredible ability unique to humans.

Pronunciation 

Sometimes a new reader has difficulty pronouncing or articulating specific speech sounds in a language. For example, the sound of /r/ can be difficult for many children to pronounce accurately. When a sound is difficult to articulate, it can be difficult for a learner to read and spell using that sound. Reading interventions can incorporate the practice of accurate speech sounds. This should be guided by a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) who has expertise in this area. 

Explicit Instruction 

It cannot be emphasized enough: direct or “explicit” instruction is the way to go when teaching phonics. This is especially true for children who are struggling with these complex skills. Learning to read is not a natural process—it must be taught, guided, practiced, and mastered.

Modeled and Guided Decoding Practice

Decoding is the way we “sound out” words in print. As soon as students begin acquiring letter sounds the instructor can guide them through decoding their first words. These words are typically simple, high-frequency words such as ‘me’ or ‘it,’ or CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words like ‘mom’ or ‘cat.’

Modeling and practice are important at this stage of intervention because 1) the student is starting to gain confidence by overcoming new challenges and 2) the instructor is instilling an “I do, we do, you do” process, equipping the student to incorporate these skills for life. Guidance and practice should continue until the skill is easy and automatic for the learner. The number of repetitions and amount of practice will depend on the profile of each specific learner.

Decoding at the Word Level

As a student continues to master foundational skills, he or she is encouraged to practice decoding words. The goal is to equip the child to eventually decode on their own so that they can overcome new, unfamiliar words in print, growing into a competent reader. 

Reading Decodable Texts

Once a student has learned to decode words quickly and accurately, they can begin to read phrases or even whole sentences. Decodable texts and books support new readers in applying their word-reading knowledge to continuous texts. 

Does My Child Need Phonics Intervention?

If your child is struggling to read, they’re not alone. National reading scores continue to decline among elementary students today, while teachers do all they can to incorporate more effective phonics instruction. 

Phonics interventions are crucial for students who cannot meet basic reading proficiency. But it’s even more important that children receive the interventions they need as soon as you notice a significant struggle. Ideally, when necessary, an intervention begins before third grade. Talk with your child’s teachers and healthcare providers to learn about what intervention options are available.

More Phonics Resources for Students Learning to Read

If you’re concerned about your child’s literacy development, we encourage you to reach out to a phonics teacher or reading specialist to address it. In the meantime, to find more tips on phonics instruction to help your child learn to read, explore our parent resources at phonics.org.

Common Phonics Mistakes to Avoid When Teaching

phonicsorg on March 15, 2024

Ahhh, phonics instruction. It’s such a special experience in a child’s education! Helping kids learn how to read and write is fascinating, rewarding, and developmentally necessary. 

Unless it’s not. 

If you’ve been trying to help your child or student(s) learn phonics but aren’t seeing reasonable progress, you may need to rethink some of the methods being used. 

Nobody’s perfect. There’s always room for improvement, whether it be for students, teachers, or parents. However, several common phonics mistakes in teaching can result in ineffective (and sometimes, detrimental) learning outcomes. 

Here are the mistakes to avoid so you can pivot your approach and equip your students with the literacy skills they deserve.

Neglecting Decoding 

It used to be common practice in phonics to take a “top-down” approach, beginning with whole words and breaking them down. Some instruction methods today still focus on similar methods. Those involving memorization of whole words or sight words neglect the process of decoding (sounding out words using letter-sound knowledge). Plus, these top-down methods push students to guess words they don’t know, which comes with a whole other set of problems.

Decoding is the most practical and effective skill to teach early readers because it gives them a way to tackle unfamiliar words on their own while still welcoming guidance from parents and teachers. It builds confidence and provides an avenue to overcome new challenges as the child learns phonics.

Reading decodable books is one way that students can put their budding phonics skills to practice. These are books that follow concepts the child has been taught so far. Students can typically read decodable books with great accuracy and then move on to a more advanced book as they grasp new concepts. 

Once decoding skills become quick and automatic, students can move onto reading phrases or short sentences. This movement from words to sentences builds fluency and confidence as kids advance from decoding words to sentences, and then whole passages. 

Ignoring Vocabulary 

Phonics instruction should always be connected with meaning. While children are learning to decode, always discuss the meaning of the words they are reading. Connecting words to meaning while decoding helps with memory and builds language comprehension skills. 

It makes sense why: children can’t comprehend the text if they don’t know how to decode the words. At the same time, expanding their vocabulary has also been shown to improve reading development. 

Introduce vocabulary words to your child or student so that when they decode new words in print, they’ll be able to successfully comprehend what they’re reading. 

Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training

Some phonemic awareness skills, like segmenting and blending, are crucial in learning to read and spell. Several reading programs advise spending a great deal of time on building phonemic awareness skills. Sometimes this instruction is entirely oral and does not use written letters (graphemes). 

A recent (2021) study found that “At present, recommendations to spend instructional time on advanced phonemic awareness training outside of print, or that students should develop “phonemic proficiency” to become proficient readers, are not evidence-based” (p. 31). 

Focusing on important phonemic awareness skills such as segmenting and blending to spell and read words is advisable. This instruction is better when paired with letters (graphemes). 

Lacking Consistent Review of Previous Instruction 

If your instruction follows a scope and sequence, great job. To achieve mastery, students need to constantly go back and practice the skills they’ve already learned. You can’t just teach new skills and then move on.

Create opportunities for kids to practice the concepts they’re learning, being careful not to present a rule and then never bring it up again. Use lessons that contain the smallest concept (such as -at endings, -ack endings, or both) and scaffold them into more challenging words or even sentences if the child is at that level.

Repeated review gives students a chance to strengthen the main skills they’re focused on learning but also recall the simpler skills they learned previously. 

Failing to Differentiate Instruction 

Differentiation is crucial for many students, especially struggling readers or children with learning disabilities. While proven phonics strategies are effective for a majority of learners, not all kids obtain the required skills through standard lessons.

Parents and instructors can seek differentiated instruction to address a child’s learning needs. There are several ways to intervene and/or accommodate a student (or group of students) who may be struggling with phonics so they can still become successful readers. Options include multisensory learning, adapting how a lesson is taught, extending timed tests, or providing one-on-one support.

Following a Phonics Curriculum That Isn’t Explicit or Systematic

Most kids can’t learn to read on their own. The extensive science of reading has proven this. Students need explicit instruction—especially when developing fundamental literacy skills. 

Avoid a type of phonics instruction that:

  • Requires rote memorization of whole words
  • Encourages guessing strategies via context cues (i.e. look at the picture to guess the word)
  • Fails to prioritize decoding skills 
  • Disregards phonemic awareness practice 
  • Relies heavily on sight words 
  • Lacks consistent, effective instruction 
  • Resists differentiated instruction options for struggling students 

There are multiple approaches to teaching phonics, several of which can supplement students’ learning when used appropriately. But to instruct phonics in a way that most children can master, teaching must be systematic (following a sequential, logical order) and explicit (providing direct rules, explanations, and guided applications).

Phonics is complex. So, if this list of mistakes to avoid during instruction seems overwhelming, it’s because it can be!

That’s why we’re here. 

To find more credible insights related to phonics and literacy development, explore the resources from phonics.org.

Making Phonics Stick: Help Kids Learn Essential Literacy Skills 

phonicsorg on March 11, 2024

Sometimes, it seems like no matter how much you practice with your child or student, they aren’t grasping phonics concepts. Maybe you repeatedly teach your child a letter or rule but they haven’t been able to remember it. This might feel frustrating or concerning. Don’t panic. 

There are a few things to consider if your child is struggling to learn phonics. Here are a few tips as you put more effort into making phonics stick.

Why is My Child Struggling to Learn Phonics?

It takes time to acquire important literacy skills, especially when learning to read and write. Children need consistent practice, correction, and guidance. Although possible, children rarely grasp concepts that “stick” right away. But if your child is struggling or falling behind, it’s a good idea to investigate why.

Developmental Factors

Maybe your child is still developing and will grasp phonics over time. Perhaps he or she has a neurodevelopmental condition or a learning disorder that needs to be addressed. Or maybe it has to do with emotions, cultural barriers, motivation, or the home or school environment—many factors contribute to a child’s learning progress. 

Lack of Explicit, Systematic Instruction 

Regardless of developmental factors at play, most children learn phonics best through explicit, systematic instruction. 

  • Explicit means they don’t have to guess or figure it out on their own. Someone with the right knowledge teaches them through direct, thorough instruction. 
  • Systematic means a child learns the simplest skills first and then gradually practices more advanced skills from there, based on the teacher’s scope and sequence.

Common reasons why kids don’t progress in phonics are that they either need more instruction on a foundational skill or they aren’t receiving proper instruction in the first place.

How to Help: Start With Foundational Phonics Skills

Building foundational skills is similar to building a house. First, builders need a precise blueprint; then, they set up the foundation; then, they construct the house’s frames and structure, and so on.

How can you start your child off with these foundational phonics skills, encouraging them to stick?

Prioritize the Sound-Symbol Correspondence

To read with confidence and accuracy, children first need to follow the most basic phonics rules. To know these rules, children must learn sound-symbol correspondences. This means:

  • The child knows the letters of the alphabet
  • The child understands the alphabetic principle—words are made up of letters, and those letters represent sounds
  • The child is taught which symbols (letters in print) correspond to which sounds (phonemes in the English language)

Evidence reveals that sound-symbol correspondence learning can predict future reading performance and fluency. It’s important for kids to accurately learn the correlation between letters and sounds because it contributes to their decoding abilities, which is a vital phonics skill for reading.

If your child knows the alphabet, appears to “read” some words, but struggles to read new or unfamiliar words accurately, they might need to go back and learn to master letter sounds. After they understand individual letter sounds, they can practice blending the sounds to read words.

More Decoding, Less Memorization

If you or your child’s teachers are focusing their reading instruction on memorizing whole words, it’s likely one reason why the child isn’t grasping the content. Visual memorization of whole words is an inefficient method of teaching a child to read.

It is easier for children to recognize words quickly when instruction is connected to auditory information. This is part of a process called orthographic mapping. The practice of sounding out words leads to sight word recognition – the instant and immediate recognition of words. 

Focusing on building a child’s decoding skills, empowers them to “sound out” new words they come across in print. Decoding is essential at every new level of phonics instruction. If a student can’t decode words from beginning to end, they risk confusion as concepts become more advanced. 

Understand the Science of Reading 

According to the science of reading, acquiring the skills to read involves a lot of cognitive effort. Children cannot naturally develop the skills that are essential for reading, beginning with basic phonics. They must not only be taught but also routinely engaged with instruction as their brains develop new, complex connections between symbols and sounds.

For this reason, phonics must be taught and practiced in ways that are backed by evidence. To understand how and why effective phonics instruction works, familiarize yourself with the science of reading. It will help you help your child as they grow in this area.

Avoid Ineffective Phonics Instruction 

Phonics education standards and methods have changed throughout history; even recently. Today, certain methods that are still used in teaching involve the opposite of explicit, systematic instruction. 

Here are examples of bound-to-fail phonics instruction habits to avoid:

  • Not giving students enough repetition and review of concepts. Systematic instruction purposefully reviews and repeats concepts to encourage mastery.
  • Isolating skill work from real-world applications. Students benefit from both phonics skill work and opportunities to practice new skills they learn during reading and writing exercises.
  • Over-modeling and under-challenging. Allow students to think and be challenged. Be supportive and correct mistakes but don’t do all the heavy lifting.
  • Providing books that are too easy or too difficult. Give students decodable texts they can practice with accuracy so they build confidence and control. 
  • Lacking a scope and sequence. If you don’t know exactly what or when to teach phonics concepts to students, systematic instruction cannot be properly facilitated.

That said, if you’ve tried all you can but your child still struggles to grasp phonics at their expected level, reach out to their teachers or a literacy specialist.

Help Your Child Learn Phonics

When helping your child learn to read or make phonics stick, it’s important to have evidence-based resources to guide the instruction they receive. 

At phonics.org, we provide teachers and parents with the phonics essentials kids need so they can become lifelong learners. If you’re passionate about phonics and literacy for kids, join the community at phonics.org.

Fun Phonics Games for Kids: Activities to Try at Home 

phonicsorg on February 28, 2024

Kids need to master basic phonics skills before they can become proficient readers. While practice with systematic phonics instruction in the classroom is necessary, many children learn best through play! To help you encourage your child to strengthen their literacy skills at home, here are some fun phonics games to try together.

Letter Recognition Activities

Letter recognition and letter sounds are the first skills children need to learn when entering phonics instruction. The alphabetic principle, or the ability to correlate letters with the sounds they make, is a crucial skill in reading and writing. 

Here are some games to help your child learn letter-sound recognition.

Letter Bingo

For letter bingo, make some bingo cards with uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and several objects in the squares. Get some tokens or small figurines your child can use to place on the bingo spaces they match with the item called.

How to play:

Give each player an alphabet bingo card. Choose a literate person to be the host of the game, calling out different letters, corresponding letter sounds, or objects with specific letter sounds. Players will use their tokens to mark off the matching letters on their bingo cards. The first person to fill out an entire row wins “Bingo!” and then gets to be the leader for the next round.

Alphabet Scavenger Hunt

Go on an adventurous treasure hunt with your child to find letters and letter sounds! To set up the game, create index cards with different uppercase and lowercase letters written on them. Secretly choose some small toys, treats, or everyday objects that match the sounds on the index cards. Hide the index card with the item that has its corresponding letter sound. For example, hide the letter <H> next to a helicopter toy, hairbrush, or hat. 

How to play: 

Explain the rules of the treasure hunt. Give your child clues and then have them search for prizes that match your clues. You might give a directional clue (“This treasure is near something wooden”), a letter clue (“This item starts with <B>”), or a letter sound clue (“Look for something that has the sound, /sh/”). If they find enough treasures, let them choose a prize.

Whack-a-Letter

This is a fun phonics game for beginner readers who love physical activities. You (or another family member or friend) will collect wooden or foam toy letters to arrange on the floor. Give players something to “whack” the letters with. A fly swatter, toy paddle, or plastic baseball bat will do. 

How to play:

Explain that you are going to spell out words on the floor with the toy letters. The child’s job is to whack a letter! When he or she knows the sound of a letter, they have to whack it and sound out the letter only one time. If they get the whole word correct, celebrate with a quick dance party or some other physical activity your child loves. Make it fun and exciting like a game of whack-a-mole. This game often results in laughs and lots of fun!

Games to Practice Blending and Segmenting 

Blending is the sounding out of letters to form full words. Segmenting is the breaking up of spoken words into their sounds. Both are important skills required for reading, writing, and lifelong learning.

Fishing for Phonics

Go phonics fishing with your kids using only a few household supplies. You’ll need:

  • Construction paper
  • Markers
  • Paper clips
  • Magnets
  • Craft string

Create a makeshift fishing rod by attaching a magnet to a string. Cut out paper fish and write graphemes of words on them (for example, /sh/ /i/ /p/ for ‘ship’). Choose words that are appropriate for your child’s skill level.

How to play:

Lay out the paper fish in no particular order. Explain to your child that they’ll “fish” for words you say to try to create the whole word. Call out a word and then pay attention to how your child “catches” the letter sounds to blend. Offer guidance and encouragement if they get stuck.

Carnival Blend Cups

This is a fun carnival-style game for kids learning consonant blends and digraphs. To set up the game, get a stack of plastic cups and a few ping-pong balls or coins. On each cup, use a permanent marker to write a consonant blend (/bl/, /tr/, /sm/, /gr/, etc.) or digraph (/sh/, /ch/, /ph/, /th/, etc.). Arrange the cups at random at a reasonable distance so your child can throw something into the opening. 

How to play:

You can sound out one of the blends of digraphs, such as /sh/ or /tr/. Alternatively, you can say a word that starts with that blend or digraph. Then, your child tries to toss the coin or ball into the correct “blend cup.” Switch it up as your child progresses their phonics skills and scramble whole word segments they have to find before the time runs out!

Sound Train

This game doesn’t require any materials—just your attention, imagination, and voice. It’s a fun way to strengthen phonological awareness, memory, and comprehension. 

How to play:

The goal of this game is to create a spoken sound train with your child. Take turns saying individual letter sounds and then coming up with another letter sound to add to it until you make a word. For example, you say /m/, your child says /i/, you say /s/, and your child says /t/. Then, your child tries to identify the whole word: ‘mist.’ You can make it more challenging after you create a train: see if your child can spell the word on a piece of paper. Get creative and try to see the longest word you can make together. 

Rhyming Games

Rhyming helps kids identify similarities in different words. It also strengthens listening skills, vocabulary, and phonemic awareness in early phonics instruction. Here are a few activities to try with a group or children or one-on-one.

Rhyme Relay Race

This is a great activity that gets kids working their bodies and minds at the same time. You don’t need any materials for this phonics game—just six or more players, a field to run, and positive attitudes.

How to play:

Separate players into teams of two or more. Have players spread out along the course in a designated relay order: the first person at the starting line, the second person farther ahead, and so on. Establish a finish line at the very end of the field. Explain that the relay race winners will be those who can think of rhymes that match your starting word.

Choose a starting word (let’s say it’s ‘craft’). Call out, “On your mark, get set, ‘craft!’” The first player at the starting line must think of a rhyming word. When they call out a correct rhyming word, they run up to their next relay teammate and tag them. That teammate calls out a different rhyming word and goes up to the next teammate, and so on. The first team to get to the finish line wins!

Two-of-a-Kind Rhymes

If your child is younger and you want to play a rhyming game one-on-one, “two of a kind” is easy and can be played anywhere.

How to play:

Say three words out loud, two of which rhyme and one that does not. For example, ‘sat,’ ‘snail,’ ‘mat.’ Have your child guess the two that rhyme. You can make it more challenging by adding words that have slightly similar sounds but aren’t technically rhymes, such as, ‘cow,’ ‘clown,’ and ‘rainbow.’ Use this as a fun learning experience, talking through why each pair of rhyming words go together and going over any mistakes. 

More Fun Phonics Games for Kids and Parents

Looking for more phonics games to play with your child at home? No matter what stage of phonics instruction your child is in, there are many activities to support his or her learning. Check out phonics.org for useful and fun phonics resources that work!

Methods of Effective Decoding in Reading

phonicsorg on February 8, 2024

When children are learning to read, they must be taught how to “sound out” letters and blend them together to form words. If you’re a parent or teacher, for example, you’ll likely hear your child put together the word ‘dog’, saying /d/ /o/ /g/ … “dog!”

This process is called decoding. 

Decoding is an important practice in reading development and one that is required for literacy. By definition, decoding is the translating of printed words into speech by sounding out each letter to form the word. 

Some children pick up decoding quickly and easily, whereas others struggle to decipher new words. It can be a frustrating phase for a child but it doesn’t have to be. 

To help your phonics students master this crucial skill in their literacy journey, here’s what you should know about effective decoding in reading.

Learning Effective Decoding Strategies 

Decoding is an aspect of systematic phonics instruction. To understand these strategies, children should already have some phonemic awareness skills, including the ability to blend individual sounds into words. 

1. Letter Sounds

While not an explicit decoding strategy in itself, learning the alphabet and letter sounds is the precursor to decoding. Children must be able to identify letters in print correctly and correlate the appropriate sounds to each letter. If a child struggles with early decoding methods, they may still need to develop their understanding of how letter sounds (phonemes) are represented by letters (graphemes). 

2. Simple to Complex 

Begin decoding instruction by teaching children to read simple words and then move to more complex words. For example, many reading programs begin with consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words like ‘cat’. Once the child can read these types of words with ease, they can start to practice decoding words with consonant blends like ‘sand’ or ‘blast’. 

Introducing a complex word like ‘giraffe’ or ‘yacht’ when a child is just learning to decode can be frustrating! Building decoding skills in a step-by-step way helps children strengthen their competence and confidence when learning to read. 

3. Blending 

To make sense of new words, children combine letter sounds to form the full word. This is called blending. As an example, when a child sees the word ‘map’ for the first time, they must identify the letter and sounds in the word and then put them together to read the word ‘map.’

There are multiple methods of phoneme blending. The easiest way to blend is called continuous blending, or connected phonation. This strategy works well with continuous sounds like /m/ that can be held or elongated. Continuous blending is where the sounds are blended together without stopping in between. For example, reading the word ‘moss’ may sound like ‘mmmmmmmmoooooooooosssssssssss’. The sounds can be repeated and sped up to read words. 

Blending is used in early reading but remains an important skill for life! It’s one of the most empowering skills in literacy development. Even through adulthood, readers use blending to decipher advanced, unfamiliar words and expand their vocabularies. 

4. Chunking 

Sometimes children come across familiar parts of a word with a new prefix or suffix. A child may know the word ‘want’ but come across the word ‘unwanted’ for the first time. They may recognize ‘want’ but then segment the sounds -un and -ed to then blend the whole word, ‘unwanted.’ 

As readers learn more advanced words that contain multiple syllables, this strategy—called chunking—can be used as a way to help decoding. Building a child’s understanding of affixes will support their ability to break a word into its smaller parts. It can be used to help them demonstrate spelling patterns, read longer words, and notice root words.

5. Syllable Splitting  

Also called syllabication, syllable splitting helps children read longer words when decoding. The word ‘definition’ can be a complex word to decode for the first time, so breaking it down into syllables may make it easier to pronounce and understand: de-fi-ni-tion, pronounced /de/ /fi/ /ni/ /shun/. 

Some children may need help with syllables in the decoding process. Using lines or symbols to split syllables can help a student visualize the correct pronunciation.

Strategies to Help Kids Practice Decoding 

Like all aspects of phonics instruction, decoding should be taught explicitly and systematically while still being approachable and engaging for students. 

To build the necessary decoding skills for a child, try to make it fun! Use games, activities, songs, and interactive stories to instill these important reading techniques. 

As a teacher or parent, model correct decoding strategies for your child or students and don’t hesitate to guide them when they get stuck. For a hands-on learning experience that supplements classroom instruction, use an educational phonics app that includes fun decoding exercises or games.

Common Decoding Challenges and Mistakes 

Every child learns to read at their own pace, so don’t worry if a student faces decoding challenges. It’s expected that they’ll make mistakes, especially during early reading. As reading skills grow, many children may struggle with irregular words, digraphs, or silent letters at first. 

Reading is a sophisticated skill that takes time, explicit instruction, effective practice, and lots of encouragement. Acknowledge your child’s struggles and strengths. Let them know it’s okay to mess up and try again. Remind them that they’re still learning and celebrate their dedication to getting better. 

If a student really struggles or falls behind in their decoding skills, you can seek insight from a phonics educator or reading specialist who uses proven instructional methods. There may be an underlying issue that needs to be addressed before the student can progress in their literacy development.

Resources to Teach Decoding Skills in Phonics Instruction 

When kids learn decoding in a systematic way, they build foundational literacy skills. Mastering these skills at each new level of reading is an exciting, empowering experience that every child deserves. 

Whether you’re helping your kindergartener practice decoding at home or teaching a class of third graders more advanced words, you need to know how to provide explicit instruction in decoding. There are helpful resources available that equip children to take the next necessary step toward becoming literate, lifelong students. 

To learn more educational tips for decoding, reading, and writing, explore the resources at phonics.org!

What is Phonics? An Introduction for Parents and Educators

phonicsorg on February 7, 2024

Anyone who can read and write in an alphabetical language has mastered an important set of skills. They know the connection between letters and the sounds each one represents. They can decipher letter and word combinations when reading and encode which sequence of letters to spell when writing. Understanding these letter-to-sound principles is one of the most important aspects of literacy; a precious ability of human communication.

If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’ve already mastered these skills in English. You likely learned them through phonics instruction, although you may not remember how. 

If you’re an educator or parent who’s helping a child learn to read, you might find yourself wondering: what is phonics? And how should I be teaching it? 

In this guide, we’ll refresh your memory and explore what phonics instruction is meant to be. 

Phonics and the Reading Pyramid

Phonics is one of the foundational pillars of the reading pyramid. Once children understand the sounds of their language and how to verbally manipulate words (phonemic awareness), they can gradually move up the pyramid. 

With continued instruction, they move up the pyramid to build fluency—the ability to read with ease, accuracy, and expression. As they grow in fluency, children build their vocabulary. Eventually, they develop all the essential reading skills and can experience reading comprehension with little adult guidance.


How Phonics Works 

Phonics instruction builds knowledge about letter-sound correlations in reading and writing. It is simply, “the relationship between speech and print” (Beck, 2006, p.16).  It is an umbrella term for several important skills children acquire through development and instruction.

Learning the Sounds of Language 

Phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear, recognize, and manipulate the different sounds in language, develops in a child’s early years of life. It sets the foundation for spoken language. 

The more that children develop and engage in literacy activities with family members, they develop pre-reading skills. They learn things like concepts of print, rhyming, several alphabetical letters, and more. Soon, they’ll be ready for phonics instruction to begin. 

The Alphabetic Principle

Before kindergarten, children typically start learning the alphabetic principle. This is the understanding that words are made of letters. It’s the concept and practice of connecting letters with their corresponding sounds (otherwise known as a “grapheme-phoneme correspondence” or GPC). Children often learn the alphabet song and know that the letters make certain sounds, like the letter <m> representing the sound /m/. With early phonics instruction, they gradually learn, for example, that the letters <ch> make the /ch/ sound as in ‘chocolate’ and /th/ is the beginning sound of the word, “thanks.”

Blending Letter Sounds to Form Words (Decoding)

The more grapheme-phoneme correspondences a child knows, the more they can practice blending. Phoneme blending is combining individual letter sounds in a word to read the whole word. This can also be called sounding out or decoding. During instruction, a child might come across a new word. The child can blend the sounds such as  /m/ /a/ /t/ to read the whole word, ‘mat’. 

Segmenting Words into Letters (Spelling/Encoding)

Inversely, children learn segmenting in phonics instruction, which is the opposite of blending. Kids learn early spelling techniques when they can spell their names, loved ones’ names, and simple words based on the individual sounds that make up a word. For example, if a child wants to spell ‘skip’ but doesn’t know how, they can gradually segment the word into its individual phonemes from start to finish: /s/ /k/ /i/ /p/.

Types of Phonics Instruction and Their Efficacy 

There are four different types of phonics. Any phonics instruction for early readers is better than no phonics instruction at all. However, some methods do have more efficacious results than others. 

Regardless of the approach in the type of phonics, instruction should be explicit and systematic. This means determining a pre-established sequence or “scope and sequence” to directly teach phonics concepts. In this way, children can start learning with easier concepts and slowly increase complexity in different stages. 

Synthetic Phonics

Synthetic phonics teaches the association of individual language sounds (phonemes) to alphabetical letters (graphemes). Then, learners are explicitly taught to “sound out” each letter and then blend the sounds to form the whole word. For example: the letter sounds /s/ /a/ /t/ are blended to decode the word ‘sat’. 

There is research-based evidence that synthetic phonics is the most efficacious type of phonics to use when teaching children to learn to read. Moore (2021) says, “It is sensible to employ an approach that makes the systematic instruction and revision of sound-spelling correspondences most comprehensible for both teachers and students. Synthetic phonics offers the simplest way to achieve this” (p. 24). 

Analogy Phonics

Analogy phonics is a top-down approach. This means the instruction starts with whole words instead of individual sounds. In analogy phonics, common “word families” or “rimes” are used to

learn words instead of blending individual letter sounds. It starts with a word a child already knows (sat), breaks them down into the onset and rime (s-at, c-at), and then introduces similar words in that pattern (mat, fat, rat, pat, etc.).

Analytic Phonics

Also known as implicit phonics, analytic phonics teaches kids to process a new word by “analyzing” its parts (phonograms) and relating them to previously learned words. For example, a child may know the words cat, sad, ran, and mat. When presented with the new word, rat, they must sift through what they know— c/at/ + m/at/ + /r/an— to conclude /r/ + –at is ‘rat’. 

An analytic phonics approach may not be effective for all children. Typically children perform better on reading and spelling with a synthetic phonics approach. 

Embedded Phonics

The embedded, or incidental, phonics method provides reading instruction using whole texts. It is based on a theory of reading instruction called “whole language.” Instead of teaching explicit, systematic phonics skills, it requires opportunistic learning through practices like sight words (the, it, and, was, etc.) and context clues (words, letters, or pictures that hint at meanings or other words in the sentence). 

Embedded phonics practices are often considered “real world” reading but can hinder a child’s decoding skills, which are essential for reading new words. Relying on context clues is considered a bad habit as it can stunt overall literacy development.

Phonics, Explained Simple Enough for a Child to Understand 

Reading is like a fun treasure hunt. You can explore all sorts of stories and ideas to find the golden nuggets you’re looking for, and sometimes, discover amazing prizes you never imagined. This treasure hunt happens in the world of words, where endless adventures of learning and imagination live. 

But when children first enter the world of words, they don’t know where to go. Everything looks squiggly and confusing because this world is made of secret codes. These secret codes are letters of the alphabet. 

The first adventure is to learn to crack the code, which is what phonics teaches. Every letter makes a special sound; many of them you already know how to speak. Every time you learn a new letter and the sounds it makes, you crack another piece of the code. 

As you learn more of these letters and their sounds, you’ll be able to decode words. Soon, the world of words will come to life and you’ll collect many treasures as you explore. With practice, you can enjoy new and exciting treasure hunts for life.

Resources to Help a Child Learn Phonics

There are countless phonics programs available today. But like the different phonics instruction methods, not all programs are the same or offer the best results.

To help you decide which phonics programs might help your child learn, phonics.org offers: 

  • Educational articles and guides: Gain a deeper understanding of phonics principles, teaching strategies, and best practices.
  • Phonics program reviews: Compare expert-reviewed assessments of popular phonics curricula to help you make an informed decision.
  • Fun phonics activities and games: Browse the top resources that make learning phonics fun and interactive.

Whether you’re teaching your child at home or a group of students in a classroom, there are affordable, effective phonics programs to help their learning process. Explore the resources at phonics.org to find the right one!

Have a phonics program or app you’d like us to review? Reach out to us at [email protected] to let us know.

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