The Deal

Students never have to know anything that you haven’t learned together.

If they haven’t encountered th then they aren’t expected to know the word the.  But they almost always do know that word and they constantly exceed your expectations and their own.

The flip-side is that they are expected to know what you have done together.  By building level on level, this is manageable and the phonics lesson becomes a place where success is always achievable.  I once sat in a meeting where a prospective trainee asked a TRT volunteer if ThatReadingThing is fun.  The answer was, “No, it’s really hard work, but it’s so satisfying that they always want more.”

This goes along with the idea of Decodability.

The way I put it in a ThatReadingThing training is that we are about “Sounds and the Spelling of Sounds” – helping our learners move from sound to print and back again.

Sounds -also known as:

• phonemes
• pronunciation

Spellings of sounds – also known as:

• graphemes
• symbols
• letters or groups of letters

Phonics is concerned with matching phonemes to graphemes:

• (reading) Say the sounds and tell me what you hear.

It is also concerned with matching graphemes to phonemes:

• (building and spelling)  What’s the first sound in trap?  Say the sound as you write.

Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondences are said to be “One to Many” and “Many to one”.*

One to Many – also known as:

• <y>  happy July myth yet
• pronunciation variations
• one symbol with more than one pronunciation
• Spelling Clone:  looks the same – sounds different

Many to One - also known as:

• “ee” team see be scheme key baby chief police receive foetus
• spelling variations
• one sound represented by more than one symbol
• Sound Clone:  sounds the same – looks different

*The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, ed. Florian Coulmas, 1996,  Oxford: Blackwell

Decodability simply means matching text to the progression of sounds that you’re using in your class.  See here for a description of the progression that I use with older struggling readers.  It is very important in the early stages for building confidence, fluency and preventing guessing as a primary strategy.

When judging the decodability of text at the Foundation levels, assign each word to one of four categories:

1. Decodable = the student has learned all the sounds in the word.
2. Decodable with one sound given = The student has learned all but one sound in a word.
3. Probable sight word = Most older struggling readers come with some words that they “just know”.
4. Freebies = technical term for a word which has two or more sounds that the student hasn’t yet learned.

At CVC, this means:

1. tat, fen, mug, lop
2. back, this, go (unknown sound in bold)
3. the, is, and………they will surprise you.
4. breakfast, cake, should (but they might “just know” these – everyone is different)

By the time you get to adding -tion, it looks like this:

1. example,  inventing, addressed, recognition
2. equipment, intervention, anybody, agreement – Note, with unstressed and “long” vowels, students will often adjust the sound slightly to get the correct word.
3. This will be completely individual
4. should, physician, cough, bicycle

What actually happens by this stage is that your students are understanding how the language works and taking greater risks when faced with an unfamiliar word.  As they are able to match up more symbols with their spoken sounds, decodability becomes less and less of an issue.

Are some words just not decodable no matter how much of the code you know?

Yes, but not very many. The ones that immediately spring to mind are one, once, two, who.  There are other words with one unusual sound like people, laugh, leopard. I would love a list of words that really do need to be taught as sight words if anyone know of one.

Fortunately, for those of us working with older students, they often know a lot of high frequency words.

Decodable: This refers to the words that can be decoded at a given level.  See this post for more information.

Progession of Sounds: Every phonics based programme introduces sounds in a different progression for their own reasons and purposes. I’ve chosen a progression which leads learners from little words (where they feel confident) quickly into longer and longer words which they will encounter in the real world.

Advanced Code: Learners need to discover two main things about the English code once they get through the Foundation levels.

• There are lots of ways to pronounce one letter or group of letters (graphemes).  I call these Spelling Clones because they look the same but sound different.  Think of <y> pretty, July, yet, myth

• There are lots of ways to spell many English sounds.  I call these Sound Clones because they sound the same but look different.  Think of the “ay” sound.  ate, aim, bay, April, they, weigh, great, vein, straight

On the Downloads page you’ll find a progression of sounds and lessons for

Foundation Levels and

Advanced or Clone Levels

Here’s some of the terminology defined:

Foundation Levels:

These levels are designed to take a learner from the ubiquitous “fat cat sat” etc to the much more exciting world of real text as quickly as possible.  SPEED is the key. Each level builds on the last one so that the basic code is constantly practised and reinforced.

Basic Code: one letter to one sound and the 5 vowels are cat, bet, bit, cot, cut and no others.

Basic Code Plus : I also include x, qu, ll, ss and zz – just to make the vocabulary more interesting.

The usual progression is

• cvc – bat, rip, fax, till but NOT sir or ball
• cvcc  – damp, quilt, golf but NOT talk or find
• ccvc – skill, skit, trap but NOT scar or stick or bride

Because this is so limited and limiting, I suggested pushing through these levels as fast as possible.

Extras: This means introducing words which are mostly 1 symbol to 1 sound but with one extra, interesting thing that helps learners to read longer and longer words.

• sh/ch/th (all at once) – lovely and easy lesson.  Best thing in the world to see a very beginning learner spell “fish and chip shop”!
• split vowels (magic-e of old)
• ed (when to pronounce the syllable and when just to add the consonant sound) I added this when I noticed that young people would read “bag” but not “bagged”.
• ck, qu, x (not technically 1 symbol to 1 sound so may need extra practice)
• ng (adds flavour with words like spring, fling and belong)

Endings: By this point the basic code is well entrenched and it’s time to make longer and longer words – though still very controlled so that even the most struggling learners can read and spell beyond their expectations.

• le
• y
• er
• ing
• tion

There is nothing “basic” about words like recognition, accomplishing and instructions yet they are all decodable by this level.