From this point on, I want you to think in sounds rather than letter names. Most of us are used to spelling in letter names.  How do you spell “stop”?  ‘ess tee oh pee’
Instead, I want you to get used to thinking of the sounds in the words and how you spell those sounds. So the question becomes, what are the sounds in “stop”?
Answer: (say it) “sss” (like a snake) “t” (touch you tongue to the front of your mouth) “o” (as in top) “p” (like you’re blowing out a candle). For the first while, it might help to whisper these sounds so that they are as clean and clear as possible.

“ay bee see dee ee eff gee”

This is the traditional alphabet that most adults use to refer to the symbols that we write to represent sounds. Older students use them naturally so it’s up to you to make sure they are not thinking in letter names as they write. If they are thinking in letter names then they are not learning to use sounds but relying on their faulty memory strategies. memory = ‘Goat is spelt gee oe ay tee’ Sound strategy = ‘The sounds in “goat” are “g” “oe” “t”. We spell it (writing & saying the sounds) g oa t’

“a buh cuh duh e fuh guh huh”

This alphabet is meant to help small children “sound out” simple words. However, the added “uh” sound can be very confusing.
Say: suh tuh o puh Now say the sounds clearly like you did at the top of the page. Which one sounds more like the real word, ‘stop’?

The other problem with this system is that it is only useful for very simple words.
My son came home from his first day in an English school and said, ’I can spell my name the English way! cuh huh a ruh luh e suh’

He was very excited but I was dismayed. What’s his name and what are the sounds?

Clear sounds

As far as possible, leave off the “uh” from the sounds.

Sometimes it’s easy: “m” (humm) “n” (nno!) “s” (hiss) “z” (buzz)

Sometimes it’s difficult: “l” “r” “w” and “y” require a little sound either before or after.

In all of these, keep the “uh” as short as possible.
For all the rest, cut off the “uh” sound for easier blending and segmenting.

Keep asking yourself, “Does that sound like the word?”

Why?  Because that command doesn’t provide enough information to get from looking at print to hearing a word and being able to say it aloud.

So what would I say?

• Say the sounds and tell me what you hear.
• Say the sounds clearly and tell me what you hear. (for the person who adds “uh” after every consonant so that “try” sounds like “tuh” “ruh” “eye”, a three syllable word.)
• Say the sounds as you see them and tell me what you hear. (for a person who isn’t in the habit of moving from left to right all through the word bcause they see each word as a whole object that they either recognise or they don’t)

As long as you keep in mind The Deal and Decodability, these are specific instructions which will usually get a result.

What might go wrong?

• The student might not be good at blending the sounds to hear a word though I find it quite rare amongst older strugglers.
• They might only be able to hear the word when someone else says the sounds.  This is usually temporary until they get confidence and understand what it is they’re listening for.
• They might have a memory problem which prevents them from remembering the first sound by the time they’ve got to the last.  I’ve only encountered this with one person who didn’t have serious substance misuse issues.  Alcohol and cannabis are terrible memory destroyers and I’m very upfront about this with my students.

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

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.

Remember! You can download charts here and progression of lessons here.

• Sorting Spelling Clones (look the same, sound different)

Prepare as list of words, each with the target spelling.  I like to introduce the idea using <y>  baby, July, yet, myth

Ideally, the distribution on your list should match the distribution in the language.

Give each student a piece of paper with a place to write the target spelling <y> and as many columns as ways to pronounce the target spelling.  For <y> you’ll need 4 columns.

The students read each word out loud and decide on the sound of the <y> in the word.

They then write the word in the correct column, saying the sounds as they write.  This can be done in a small group or individually with the teacher circulating and making sure people are saying the sounds.

Because every word has the letter <y> (or whatever target spelling you’ve chosen) it is almost impossible, even for good readers, to do this in silence.

• Sorting Sound Clones  (sound the same, look different)

Prepare a list of word each of which has the same sound. Again, the list should reflect the distribution of the spelling variation in everyday English words.

I introduce the idea with “k”  cat , kit,   black ,  scheme,   occur,  antique – though I don’t usually include this one.

Give each student a piece of paper with a place to write the target sound “k” and as many columns as there are spelling variations for that sound.  For “k” you’ll need 5 or 6. For “ay” you’ll need 9 columns which I spread out across two “landscape”  A4 boards.

Have the students read each word out loud and decide which bit is the spelling for “k” in that word.  Write, saying the sounds in the correct column.

This activity is tempting to do by sight because you can just look at the word and guess, visually, which bit is the “k” sound.  Therefore it is very very important that each student is reading the word out loud, and saying the sounds as they write.

The goal of this lesson is NOT to have a perfectly completed chart or even to know how many ways there are to spell “k”.  The point of the activity is to further reinforce your students’ understanding of the relationship between the symbols they see and the sounds they say.

• Spelling with Puzzles

Keep on doing exactly what you were doing through the Foundation levels.  See here for a reminder.  Scroll down to Foundation Lessons – Word Level- Multi-syllable

• Sorting Sound Clones for Spelling

Sometimes I get a student who reads quite well but is a terrible speller.  See my ThatReadingThing posts about working with an adult visual learner.  One of the activities we did was the spelling version of sorting Sound Clones.

Give each student a board or paper set up as per the normal Sound Clones lesson.  The difference is that you hold onto the list of words.  Read each word and have the students decide which spelling of the target sound is in that word.

You can also do this to review a sound.  You may want to help them by setting up all the sounds across the columns (from most to least common is possible) or, you might want them to figure them out for themselves.  This is a good whole class activity.

• Spelling help

You may meet students who really struggle with the idea of matching sounds to symbols.  The following is reprinted from thatreadingthing.com

If your student can’t get to grips with the idea that words are made up of sounds…….

Sometimes you get a student who has spent years depending on complex but faulty strategies for spelling. They hang every word on another and look for words within words even when they make no sense. Quite often, these students resist saying the sounds as they write because they are so used to using only visual memory. Here is something to try.

Sound Clones (sound the same, look different)

Have sound blanks (the little squares) on hand as well as the Sound Clones board. Instead of showing the student the word, ask: “What are the sounds in ____?”

Put down a blank for each sound.

What are the sounds in claim?

“k” (put down a blank) “l” (put down a blank) “ay” (put down a blank) “m” (put down a blank)

If they say “kl” for the first sound, ask for the sounds in “kl”.

If they say the letter name, explain that we’re only talking about sounds and repeat the word. For instance, if the word is “ate”, they don’t have to worry about whether it’s ate or eight. You may have to model it a couple of times for them.

After all the blanks are on the table, have the student fill in the sounds, saying them as they write. I have a student who can’t seem to think in “sounds” but is happy to answer the question, “How do you draw the “ay” sound in claim?”

Finally, have them write it on the Sound Clones (sound the same, look different) board. This is slower than a normal Sound Clones lesson so you might get through only half the words. It works particularly well for students who have a large sight vocabulary but very weak spelling. It forces them to spell within the constraints of the sound blanks, one for each sound.

Note: when the sound is a Split Vowel, i.e. ate, then there will be only 2 blanks for “ay” and “t”. When is comes to filling in the blanks, you will have to add a blank for the final e. I have my students underline the split vowels to show they are one sound.

At the Foundation levels, I would never consider a session successful if, by the end of it, a student could recite all of the basic code, sound by sound. I would only see the session as successful if they used their growing knowledge of the basic code to read and understand some text.

Before you go any further, have a look at this post about decodability.

Foundation Lessons -Text Level – Controlled

• Read

Controlled means that the text is written to match the progression of sounds being used.  When you write text for the Foundation levels, use as natural a tone as possible given the constraints.

Here are some sample sentences for ThatReadingThing Foundation levels:

Keep in mind ther 4 levels of decodability.

• CVC What did Cal tell that fat man at the pub?
• CVCC Can you lend us a hand with this ramp?
• CCVC Can you sell your product for a hundred pounds and still make a profit?
• sh/ch/th I had the fish and chips at lunch but wish I had the ham and cheese salad sandwich.
• split vowels It’s a shame that she went home early and missed the game.
• ck/x /qu He’s got a pickle and fish sandwich on extra thick white bread.
• ed He admitted that he intended to take the cash and go to Spain.
• ng I like winter but spring is the best time of year.
• le I have terrible battles with my lad about homework.
• y Harry likes to carry a lucky penny.
• er The roads will be better when the gritter gets finished.
• ing She is expecting her second baby in September.
• tion The instructions were simple but the desk was difficult to assemble.

• Write

Writing whole sentences at the foundations levels will depend very much on the levels of ability in your class.  However, the sentences you have used for reading can also be used for dictation exercises with decodability applying in reverse.  Put all words except 100% decodable words up on the board for reference.  They will write the words, saying the sounds, sometimes copying from the board and sometimes spelling.

That may sound off-putting, but a noisy classroom where everyone is saying sounds is preferable to a quiet classroom where everyone is reciting strings of letter names in their heads.

Foundation Lessons -Text Level – Uncontrolled

• Read

Uncontrolled text or “real reading” should be introduced as soon as possible.  For those at Foundation levels, I love the book, Random Acts of Kindness, 365 ways to make the world a nicer place by Danny Wallace. It’s got very short bits of text, some of which are suitable even for CVC level reading but perfectly suitable for adults. ISBN is 0091901758

• Write

I would leave any free writing activities until your learners have grown in confidence and knowledge of the code.  Again, apply decodability in reverse and don’t expect them to spell words with sounds that they haven’t yet encountered.

Each one of these lessons will take a few minutes of any session.  Each activity reinforces the basic code and stretches a learner’s capabilities.  If a person can read ten cvc words, they can read a thousand.  Keep moving!

Foundation Lessons -Word Level – Single Syllable

• Build with a chart

Building is a stepping stone to spelling and is a risk-free and success-rich way to discover how the English code works.  It’s a very important and encouraging activity for people who think they “can’t”.  You start with what they CAN do which is speak and hear (usually).  The “chart” is simply a visual reference for the sounds that you’re working with.  I give each learner a chart with all of the basic code laid out clearly.  When I say, “We’re going to build the word ’sap’.  What’s the first sound you hear when I say ’sap’?”, they will listen for the sound and look for the symbol on the chart.

You can have this on a whiteboard or in front of each student.  The young people I work with usually know the whole basic code but need reminding that they do!  The visual reference gives them a safety net because I’m never going to ask them for something that’s not in front of them.  Slower students may need a smaller number of sounds to start with.

When you do this activity notice how some will look and copy each sound as they write it while others will just listen for the sound and write the correct letter.  The latter are spelling and ready to move on.

“Say the sound as you write it” becomes the chant of the classroom.  Explain how they will remember so much better when they use lots of senses at once.    Model the saying sounds all the time.  See here for more about saying sounds.  (be patient while I add content……)

• Spell

Spelling at this level is simply building but without the visual clues.  With weaker students, have them spell only words that they have built.  Stronger students will be able to apply all the code knowledge that they have to spell way beyond expectations of themselves but don’t ask them to do anything that you haven’t done together.  If you’re working at the CVC  level, don’t ask them to spell ’stop’.

• Read

At the early levels, reading individual words helps to break old guessing habits.  “Say the sounds clearly and tell me what you hear”  is a great way to convince a student that sounds and symbols are linked when they have a history of looking at a work and thinking, “I don’t know that one.”  One caution is that a student only has to read maybe ten words at each level in order to get this point.  Reading endless lists of words is boring boring boring.

Foundation Lessons -Word Level -  Multi Syllables

• Build with puzzles

This activity is great for multi-syllable words from the first lesson right through the advanced code.  Instead of using a chart, write each sound on a little rectangle. I use small pieces of laminated card approximately 1.5 x 1 inch and write on them with dry erase pens.  More able students will eventually make up the puzzles themselves (which is really spelling but I don’t like to put them off.)

For the first lesson you’ll have to get them to understand the concept of a syllable.  I start with our names, familiar places, things in the room and get the student to join in, tapping the syllables on the table.  For the first couple of puzzle sessions, expect to help with the syllables by saying them very slowly and tapping as you say them.

Keep the puzzle pieces in your hand. This is key! The reason is that we don’t really care whether or not the students can build ‘laptop’ with puzzle pieces.  What we do care about is that they have a clear process in their heads for how to approach spelling an unfamiliar long word.  Later in the session they will attempt to spell ‘laptop’ without the puzzle pieces and you will see what I mean.  So hold onto those puzzle pieces for a bit.

“We’re going to build the word laptop. How many syllables in laptop? Say them clearly”

Hand out the puzzles to each student. (There will be one card for each sound.)

“What’s the first syllable again?”

“Can you find the sounds – say them as you move them.”

“What’s the next syllable?”

“Say the sounds as you move them.”

Each student should have the correct word in front of them.  Have them write the word, saying the sounds as they write.  Some will say each sound while others will say the whole syllable as they write.  Either is fine but we want them, for the sake of fluency, to head towards saying the whole syllable.  They are welcome to copy the puzzle because this is building.

• Spell

As with single syllable words, this is just like building but without the puzzle pieces.  Now is when they need that process in their heads.  “You’re going to spell the word ‘laptop’.  How many syllables in ‘laptop’? What’s the first syllable?  Say the sounds as you write them.  What’s the next syllable?”

• Read

As with single syllable words.  Again, this helps to conquer a guessing habit but it also helps our strugglers to learn how to track from left to right all the way through a long word.  For this reason, don’t cover up a syllable at a time.  If they need help, bread up the word with a faint pencil line or put a dot at the end of each syllable.

Just a note here that we’re not talking about dictionary syllables but spoken syllables.  So ‘little’ is litt le  or li ttle.  I’ll write another post just about syllables and spelling.  (note to self)

That’s a lot on information in one post.  Ask for clarifications, (and point out typos).

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