How to teach phonics in the primary classroom

Different approaches

A direct or indirect approach?

Phonics is a way of teaching reading and writing by

developing childrens phonemic awareness (their ability
to hear and identify individual sounds). In phonics, we
teach children the link between sounds and graphemes
(letters, or groups of letters, that represent single
sounds). We also show them how to read words, both
individually and in texts. The objective of phonics is to
enable children to decode written words by sounding
them out (reading), and to encode sounds into
graphemes (writing). Several approaches have been
used to teach phonics in a systematic way:

Synthetic phonics has grown in popularity in recent

years, partly because research claims that a direct
approach to teaching the phonic rules of English works
better than an indirect one (such as the embedded or
analogy approaches). Practitioners of synthetic phonics
feel that the spelling and pronunciation patterns of
English make an indirect, inductive approach too difficult
for young learners. They argue that the written code of
English is a complex one, so it is unrealistic to expect
young children to work it out for themselves. The rest
of this guide will focus on practical ways of getting the
most benefit from the synthetic phonics approach.

Analogy phonics
This approach consists mainly of teaching children new,
unknown words through analogy with known words
(i.e. reading mat by recognizing that -at is contained in
words that are already known such as cat, hat, and bat).

Analytic phonics
Analytic phonics is an indirect approach in which the
teacher helps the children work out the letter-sound
relationships for themselves by presenting them with
groups of words containing the same sound. For
example the teacher writes the letter f followed by
several words, such as fox, fish, fun, and four, and then
helps the children see that all the words start with the
same letter and the same sound.

Synthetic phonics, step by step

A formal synthetic phonics programme is based on the
idea that the children will be working on letters and
sounds regularly and frequently over a long period, both
at school and at home. Following the structure of the
programme is important, and teachers normally work
through all the sounds in a prescribed sequence. The
aim of this section and the Tips section is to describe
very general aspects of such a programme. Links to fuller
information on phonics teaching are provided at the end
of this guide.
Synthetic phonics is based on a series of components
linked to the alphabet:

Embedded phonics

Letter-sound correspondences

Embedded phonics involves helping children develop

phonics skills by reading texts, such as stories. In this
approach children use their knowledge of sound-letter
relationships of known words and contextual clues to
work out new words. This approach places less emphasis
on phonics and more on reading for meaning first. It
is an approach that relies to some extent on indirect
learning, without a strong focus on individual sounds.

By using different techniques and resources, such as

songs, actions, mime, realia, etc., children are taught the
correspondence between the different sounds of the
English phonological system and the graphemes that
represent those sounds. To begin with, therefore, they
start working with sounds in isolation.

Phonics through spelling

This approach teaches children to isolate the sounds in
words and apply a set of rules to write them down. They
learn how to break words down into separate phonemes
and to select graphemes for those phonemes.

Synthetic phonics
In this approach children learn how to convert letters
into sounds (phonemes), and then to blend the sounds
to form recognizable words; this is called a part-to-whole
approach. For example, in the word cat, children learn to
identify the individual sounds /k/, //, and /t/, and then
blend them together to make the whole word: /kt/.

Blending sounds
Blending sounds starts as soon as children have sounded
out the third phoneme in the word, e.g. /t/ in /kt/.
A typical approach is to sound out the phonemes
individually and then to blend them as we saw earlier:
/k/, //, /t/ /kt/. Gradually, and over time, children
learn to blend letter sounds in different combinations,
in order to sound out complete words. Blending is the
process that leads to reading.

Segmenting sounds
Once children are able to identify the individual sounds
in a word and blend them, they are ready to start doing
the same in reverse. They learn how to separate the
sounds in a word, make a mental representation of the
graphemes linked to those sounds, and finally write
those graphemes down on paper. Segmenting is the
process that leads to writing.

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Tricky words and alternative spellings

There are words in English that do not follow the

ordinary spelling and phonetic patterns. If children
sound them out by applying the phonetic rules they
know, the word is pronounced incorrectly. These are
called tricky, special, or red words in different synthetic
phonics programmes. Tricky words need to be worked
on separately because of their special characteristics,
ideally in contexts that make them memorable for
children.

Six tips for teaching phonics

1 When to start
Psycholinguistics research suggests that the human
ear has the plasticity to hear and reproduce any
speech-based sound up to the age of seven. After
that, the ability to reproduce speech-based sounds
starts becoming limited to those sounds produced
only in the immediate environment. So to achieve
the best results, it is felt that children learning English
should start with a synthetic phonics programme
at an early age. For this reason many early years
education experts consider that the benefits of an
English language synthetic phonics programme are
greater early on in childrens literacy development
rather than later.

Phonics is about producing and recognizing sounds,

so the more oral practice, the better. When phonics
is part of learning English as a second or foreign
language, teachers should concentrate more on
oral practice of the sounds, on the letter-sound
correspondence, and on blending. Naturally, writing
is important, too, but at a later stage and only once
children have gained some skill and confidence in
the oral aspect of phonics.

Multi-sensory activities
Phonics is not effective when taught in isolation, but
should be fully integrated into the childrens English
language curriculum. As with most aspects of preprimary education, a multisensory approach that
uses songs, actions, pictures, and realia is believed
to make the learning of phonics easier and more
memorable. This approach enables children to
understand sound-spelling relationships better, and
improves their progress in literacy development.

CVC words
Beginning with CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant)
words is the easiest and simplest way to start
blending, as CVC words have an easily recognizable
pattern (all letters are sounded in a standard way,
without any tricks or special sounds). So children
find it easy to apply their letter-sound knowledge to
decoding the letters into sounds. Later on, little by
little, the children should start working on longer,
more complex words, such as CVCC and CCVC.

Moving towards independent reading

In a formal synthetic phonics programme it is
important not to jump ahead. Children should only
practise reading words that contain grapheme
combinations they are familiar with. If they read
only decodable books which have been created
specifically for synthetic phonics programmes, and in
which the writers take into account the sounds they
have learned, they become more successful readers.
This is an important first step towards independent
reading.

Ideal teaching pace

In schools where children have daily English lessons,
the ideal pace is one sound every day for four
days, and a fifth day for practising, reviewing, and
consolidating. However, not all schools have daily
English lessons. If you only have three lessons per
week with your class, the ideal pace is two sounds,
plus a revision session on the third day. Fewer
lessons per week means the programme will need
to be extended over a longer period, but the key
point is to teach phonics in a cumulative, regular
way (regardless of the number of weekly sessions
in English), in order to build up phonemic and
phonological awareness, little by little.

Lots of oral practice

Eight phonics activities

The following eight activities are just a few examples
of ways that teachers can bring phonics to life, helping
children understand how letters and sounds work in an
accessible, play-oriented way.

Introduce a new sound

Aim To present letter sounds in isolation
1 Before the class, prepare a flashcard with the
letter-sound you want to introduce. In the centre
of the card make a big picture of a key word that
contains the sound that you want to introduce
(e.g. sun for /s/, apple for //, etc.). At the top, or in
one of the top corners of the card, write the letter
that represents that sound.
2 Show children the picture on the card, covering
the letter so that they dont see it yet. Say the
word, highlighting the initial sound (e.g. sun,
sun, sun; /s/, /s/, /s/). To make the sound more
memorable, you can add a gesture that represents
the sound (e.g. a snake for /s/).

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3 When you have practised the sound orally several
times, uncover the letter, show it to the children
and, pointing at it, repeat the sound several times.
4 In the next lesson, work with another sound in the
same way. Afterwards, revisit the sound learned
the day before, and practise it again.
Variation To make this activity more motivating for
the children, try creating a short song about the
picture and its initial sound, and singing it with them.
An easy way to do this is to take a well-known song
and adapt it. For example, with the sound // you
can create the following simple song, to the tune of
Frre Jacques:
// // apples, // // apples.
Yum, yum, yum. Yum, yum, yum.
// // // //- apples,
// // // // apples
In my tum. In my tum.

Slap the letter!

Aim To practise sound-letter identification of
individual sounds
1 Prepare some cards with the letter-sounds you
want to practise. You can start with just three or
four sounds and go on adding more as you work
on them in class. Stick the cards on a wall in the
classroom, or on the board.
2 Divide the class into two groups. The two groups
should stand in two lines, facing the cards.
3 Call out a sound. The first child from each group
has to run and slap the right letter. The first child
to slap the correct letter gets a point for his or her
team.
Note This is a lively activity and you need to take into
consideration factors like the energy level of your
class. It may be an excellent activity to do with a class
that needs to use up some energy, but it may also be
necessary to do a good settling activity afterwards.
If you want to make this activity quieter, you can get
the children to just point to the letter-sounds when
you call them out.
Variation When the children know a range of
different sounds, you can play a more advanced
version of this game. You say a CVC word, and the
children have to slap all three corresponding letters,
and tell you the word they form.

2 Give each child a copy of the text and a

highlighter pen. The children work individually,
and each child has the same text.
3 Tell them to look for the letter sound you are
working on at the moment, or one that they
have worked on recently, and to highlight it. Set a
time limit for them to look for and highlight each
example of the target letter (e.g. one minute). As
you go around the classroom checking their work,
encourage them to sound out the letter each time
they highlight it.
4 When time is up, ask them to put their pens down
and count up the letters they have highlighted.
Check their answers and give them the total
number of the target letters that are in the text. If
some of the children have not found all of them,
put them in pairs and see if they can find the
remaining examples.
Note You can tell the children to keep the text for
later lessons as they can continue looking for other
letter-sounds that you introduce each day.
Variation This works well for older children: put the
children into small groups of three and four, and
explain that the aim is to see which group can find
the most examples of the letter sound. The groups
can organize themselves in any way they want. For
example, they can all work through the text together,
or each child can be responsible for one section of
the text.

Collect the letters

Aim To practise sound-letter identification of
individual sounds
1 Before the lesson, photocopy a short text,
such as a story. The difficulty of the text is not
important, as the children will not be reading it for
comprehension.

Sound boxes
Aim To practise sound-letter identification of paired
consonants
1 Prepare two boxes with small toys or objects
inside that contain the paired sounds you want to
work with (e.g. /t/-/d/: table, train, tin dog, daisy,
duck).
2 Check that the children know how to say each
of the toys or objects, teaching or revising words
as necessary. Practise the pronunciation, paying
special attention to the consonants in question.
3 Mix up all the objects and toys from both boxes
and ask for volunteers to come and put them in
the correct box, at the same time as they say the
sounds aloud.
Variations Once children know how to play this
game, you can give sound boxes to children in small
groups for them to play the game together. As you
introduce more sounds, you can increase the level of
challenge by playing the game with several sound
boxes, recycling pairs of consonants learned in
previous lessons.

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5

Aim To practise identification of voiced and unvoiced

consonants
1 Before the lesson, decide on three pairs of voiced
and unvoiced consonants that you want to work
on (e.g. bp, zs, gk). Write the six consonants on
six round stickers, and place one inside each egg
carton cup. Put a marble or a small ball inside the
egg carton; this will move around the inside of the
carton and land on different consonants.
2 Show the children the difference between voiced
and unvoiced consonants by telling them to
gently put one hand, or finger, on their throats.
Get them to say a voiced sound (e.g. b, z, g) and
then, an unvoiced one (e.g. p, s, k). Ask them if they
notice any difference.
3 When sounding out the first group, the children
should feel vibration in their throat, whereas when
sounding out the second group, there should be
no vibration.
4 Get the children to sit down on the floor in a
large circle and have them pass the box round,
shaking it in time to some music (or a song you all
sing together). Make sure that the children shake
the egg carton well, as this will make the marble
inside jump to different sections of the box.
5 Stop the music without warning: the child with
the box in his or her hands opens the lid and says
the consonant the marble is on, and also whether
it is voiced or unvoiced. If it is correct, he or she
gets a point. For an extra point they must say a
word that contains that sound.
6 Start the music again and repeat steps 5 and 6. If
you like you can say that the first player to reach a
certain number of points is the winner.

2 Get the children in pairs or small groups of four

and give them their pirate pictures and gold coins.
Explain that they must only look at the front of the
coins and that they mustnt look at the back of the
coins until the end of the game.
3 The children have to sound out and blend the
CVC words on the gold coins, and decide if they
are real words or not. If they decide that they are
real, they put the coins in the treasure chest; if
they think they are not real, they put the coins in
the sharks mouth.
4 Once they have worked through all the gold
coins, they check if they have guessed correctly by
turning them over.
5 The winning pair or group is the one with the
most coins with real words in the treasure chest.
Tip This activity works best with real words that the
children either dont know very well or havent seen
yet, and made-up words that look like they could be
real words.

Egg carton consonant game

The pirates game

Aim To practise blending CVC words
1 This game can be played in pairs or in small
groups. Before the class, you will need to prepare
the following materials for each pair or small
group: two large sheets of card (A3 if possible),
one with a picture of a pirate next to a big
treasure chest with an open lid, and the other
with a picture of a pirate next to a shark coming
out of the water with a big, wide-open mouth.
You will also need to prepare the same set of 12
gold-coloured coins per pair or group, and write
CVC words on them. Some of these should be
real words that the children have recently worked
on, and some of them should be made-up words,
e.g. fon, gan, tep, sig, lup. On the back of each coin
draw a little picture of the word on the other side
of the coin (if it is a real word) or a red X (if it is a
made-up word).

Build the words

Aims To practise blending CVC words and identifying
the position of sounds in words.
1 The children do this activity in pairs. Before the
class, you will need the following materials for
each pair: one piece of A3 paper and 30 tiles (small
squares of card, each one big enough to write one
letter). Write the following three headings at the
top of each piece of A3 paper: Beginning, Middle,
and End. Write the numbers 1 to 10 down the left
side of the paper these are to keep the rows of
words straight.
2 Prepare a list of 10 CVC words that you want your
children to read and practise, e.g. cat, sit, got, etc.
3 Use the same list to write all the letters needed for
your ten CVC words on the tiles, e.g. c, a, t, s, i, t, g,
o, t, etc. Write one letter per tile.
4 Children work in pairs; tell them they are A and B.
Fold the lists of CVC words so that only the first
five words can be seen. Give these lists to all the A
children, and give all the B children the A3 papers
and the tiles.
5 Child A reads out the first word and child B has
to build the word along row 1, putting the right
tiles in the correct Beginning, Middle, and End
columns.
6 A and B continue in this way, doing words two to
five. Meanwhile you walk around the classroom,
checking and helping where necessary.
7 When each pair has done the first five words, they
should change over, and do words 610.
Variation This activity can also be done as a team
game, with all children divided into teams A and B,
and using just one list of words and one set of tiles.

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8

Toss the pancake

Aim To identify long and short vowels
1 Prepare some pancakes, using yellow paper for
the uncooked side, and brown paper for the
cooked side. Glue both parts together. On the
yellow side, write words containing short or long
vowels, e.g. cat (short), car (long). On the brown
side write either long or short and the vowel
itself, e.g. long a (for car) or short a (for cat).
2 The children work in pairs or small groups. You will
need one small frying pan and one spatula per
group.
3 Put the pancakes in a pile, with the yellow
sides facing up. Children take it in turns to put
a pancake in the pan, read the word on it, and
decide together if the vowel sound is long or
short.
4 The children then toss the pancake with the
spatula to look at the other side, and check to see
if they are right or not.

Tip Laminate the pancakes to make them last longer.

Variation It is also possible (and more fun) to toss the
pancake just using the pan without the spatula, but
more skill is needed for this!
Further information Information about complete
phonics programmes is widely available; the
following websites are just a starting point:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/
system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190599/
Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf
Here you can find a teaching resources guide
produced by the government of the United
Kingdom: Letters and Sounds: Principles and
Practice of High Quality Phonics. Although it is
designed with teachers of native speakers in mind,
many of the activities are useful in a non-native
context as well.
https://global.oup.com/education/content/
primary/series/oxford-owl/?region=uk
This website contains information about Oxford
Owls resources for phonics teaching. It is
designed for teachers following a full phonics
programme with their class.

Find out more about professional development courses at

www.oup.com/elt/oxfordteachersacademy

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