Phonics Cheat Sheet

What is the skill and why does it matter?

• Phonics is the ability to recognize that letters and letter combinations stand for sounds and to apply that knowledge to read words.
• The goal of phonics instruction is to ensure students are able to apply phonics with automaticity, resulting in the ability to read most words “by sight.”
• The faster and more accurately students can read words the better able they will be at reading for understanding.
• Various methods have been used to teach children to read words including explicit, systematic approaches to phonics, and methods that do not teach phonics. Of these, explicit, systematic phonics instruction provided greater gains in phonics knowledge and word reading than other approaches that do not involve explicit instruction in phonics (e.g., whole language, sight word based).
• For that reason, we emphasize providing students with explicit, systematic phonics instruction.

How long and how often?

Phonics instruction should start in kindergarten and consist of short, fast-paced, clear daily 20-minute lessons.

Before Teaching

Before instruction, assess students’ phonics skills by using this assessment:

K-3 Phonics Assessment

Sequencing Phonics Introduction

Letter Sounds

Consider the following suggestions as you determine the sequence to teach letter sounds: a) separate visually or auditorily similar letters, b) introduce more useful letters first, and c) teach lower case letters before upper case letters.

Example Sequence:

a m t s i f d r o g l h u c b n k v e w j p y

Reference: Carnine, D. W., Silbert, J., Kame’enui, E. J., & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (6^th Ed.) Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall

Word Sequencing

Once students have mastered at least two sounds (chose one vowel and one to two consonants), begin teaching how to blend those sounds into words using Vowel-Consonant (VC) and Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) words. Use only letters the student knows to make words.

CVC – Variant words

Using letters from the recommended order above, begin teaching how to decode words that start with continuous sounds before introducing words that start with stop sounds.

Continuous sounds: m s f r l n v w y

All vowels (a i o u e)

Stop sounds: t d g h c b k j p

• VC words (am, if, at) and CVC words (man, sam, mid, fit) – words that start with continuous sounds
• CVCC words (fast, lift, mend, pond) – words that start with continuous sounds
• CVC words (dim, tam, cat) – words that start with stop sounds
• CVCC words (cost, tusk, damp) – words that start with stop sounds
• CCVC words (snap, flop; spit, stun; gram, drum) – words that start with both initial sounds as continuous (snap, flop), then initial sound continuous second sound stop (spit, gram), finally, initial sound stop, second sound continuous (gram, drum)
• CCVCC (plunk, blend, primp)
• CCCVC/CCCVCC (splat, split, splash, sprint)

VCe words

Once students can consistently identify 6-8 sounds within CVC – variant words, begin teaching VCe words (same, made, ride).

VCe Rule: If the word has a vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) pattern the first vowel says its name.

Example: make (VCV “a” says its name), hoping (VCV “o” says its name), hopping (not VCV, o does not say its name). Teach using examples and nonexamples (tap, tape; dim, dime; mop, mopping, mope, moping).

Sequence of letter combinations – suggested order for teaching sound combinations (digraphs, vowel teams, r-controlled, diphthongs)

Reference: Carnine, D. W., Silbert, J., Kame’enui, E. J., & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (6^th Ed.) Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall

How to Explicitly Teach this Skill

Phonics instruction of the 44 phonemes (sounds) should be explicitly taught in a systematic way. Direct instruction taught in sequence will maximize students learning (example sequence chart above).

Phonics should be taught to automaticity, meaning that students must be able to recognize the letter-sound combination automatically when they see it.

Step 1: Model (I do)

Model a new phonics skill.

For example: This is letter “a”. What letter? Letter “a” makes the sound /a/. What sound? This is letter “m”. What letter? Letter “m” makes the sound /m/. What sound? When we put “a” and “m” together, we make the word /am/. What word?

Within the whole group modeling, provide each student with time to practice the sound and skill.

Step 2: Guided Practice (We do)

During guided practice, provide additional practice with the phonics skills taught.

The teacher prompts students to complete activities using phonics skills they have already learned. The goal is to help students gain automaticity with taught skills.

Note: Use FCRR resources located in the Instructional Library for practice activities.

Step 3: Independent Practice (You do)

When students engage in independent reading practice, remind them to use specific phonics skills that they have learned.

For example, when passing out a new book, you may tell them: When you are reading this book, you will find lots of words with “oa” together. Remember that “oa” together says /oa/, like in boat.

How to Explicitly Teach a Skill

Each skill within a phonics lesson should be taught using explicit instruction (I do, we do, you do). The instructional format below provides an example of teaching a small group of students how to sound out a new word. This format is applicable to teaching any skill (e.g., blending, segmenting, first sound, last sound, vocabulary).

The following teacher tips are useful for teaching students how to blend sounds to decode new words.

Teacher Tip A: When blending, model how to sound out words without pausing between sounds. For example: to sound out “ram” say /rrraaamm/ (not /r/ /a/ /m/); when words begin with a stop sound, say the sound and quickly jump to the next sound, to sound out “tan” say /taaannn/ (not /t/ /a/ /n/). To check if you are blending sounds correctly, imagine you are a famous singer, and you are “singing” as you sound out words without stopping between the sounds.

Teacher Tip B: Avoid teaching individual blends (fl, br, st, gr) separately, instead teach students how to blend sounds (see Teacher Tip A). Once students have mastered how to blend sounds, they can apply that process to any word with blends.

Prep & Materials

• Use cues for help

When students are stuck, you can prompt them to remember what the sound says by referring to a cue. Have pictures to help remind students of the sound for that phoneme.

For example, “How do we read this word (for)? The word starts with the same letter as the “f” on the picture card for fish.

• Choose the phoneme

Before leading a phonics lesson, decide which words you will use to ensure that the patterns of words follow the phonics rule you are working on. For example, when teaching the letters /ea/, say long-e as in cheap and leap; you will not want to use the word “bear” because it is an exception to this rule.

• Sight words are taught differently

Know that you will teach sight words or high-frequency words differently than words that are phonetic and can be decoded.

Considerations/ Differentiation

As students gain phonics knowledge, use reading assessment data to assign students to groups based on phonics ability. This will help you advance students who have mastered skills and provide additional support to students who have not mastered more foundational skills.

Resources

• Includes a guide to teaching phonics systematically, including the sound order: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/specialeducationinduction/files/2011/09/1-Literacy-teaching-guide-phonics.pdf
• This Reading Mama has free phonics cue cards: mega-pack-free-phonics-cards

Carnine, D. W., Silbert, J., Kame’enui, E. J., & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (6^th Ed.) Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall

Assessment

Track students progress in phonics by using this Mastery Task for Phonics.

K-3 Phonics Assessment.