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.
