Sounds first, letter names second
Teach the sound each letter makes, not its name. The letter s says sss, m says mmm, a says the short a as in apple. Letter names (ess, em, ay) are useful for spelling later, but a child who tries to read cat by saying see-ay-tee cannot hear the word. Keep the sounds pure and short: t is a quick t, not tuh, or blending later becomes cuh-a-tuh instead of cat.
A sensible teaching order
Most phonics programmes start with a small set of letters that make lots of words quickly: s, a, t, p, i, n. With just those six sounds children can read sat, pat, tin, pin, tap, nap, sit and more, so reading real words starts in the first week. The next groups typically add m, d, g, o, c, k, then e, u, r, h, b, f, l, then the remaining letters and the first digraphs.
The exact order matters less than the principle: a few sounds at a time, each practised until automatic, and new words built only from sounds already taught.
Blending and segmenting
Blending is pushing sounds together to read a word: c, a, t becomes cat. Segmenting is pulling a word apart to spell it: dog becomes d, o, g. They are two halves of the same skill and should be taught together from the start. A child who can do both with three-sound words is reading and writing.
Practise blending out loud with sound buttons: dots under each letter that the child touches while saying the sound, then a swipe underneath as they say the whole word. For segmenting, have the child say the word slowly, count the sounds on their fingers, and write one letter for each finger.
CVC words
CVC stands for consonant, vowel, consonant: cat, dog, sun, pin, hop. They are the first real words children read because every letter makes exactly one sound and the vowel is short. Word families (at: cat, hat, mat, sat; op: hop, mop, top) let children read many words by changing only the first sound, which builds confidence fast.
Short vowel sounds are the sticking point. A child who can hear the difference between pin and pen, and between hat and hut, has done the hard work. Sorting picture cards by vowel sound is worth doing every day for a fortnight.
Digraphs: two letters, one sound
A digraph is two letters that together make one sound: sh in ship, ch in chip, th in thin, ck in duck, ng in ring. The child must learn to see the two letters as one unit, so ship has three sounds (sh, i, p), not four. Teach the most common consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th, ck, ng, wh, ph) after the single letters are secure.
Vowel digraphs (ai in rain, ee in tree, oa in boat, oo in moon) come next, and they are where English gets awkward because the same sound can be spelled several ways. Teach one spelling at a time and expect it to take longer.
Blends: two letters, two sounds
A consonant blend is two or three consonants next to each other where each keeps its own sound: bl in black, st in stop, tr in tree, str in string. Blends are not new sounds; they are a harder blending task because the child has to hold more sounds in their head. Words with blends are called CCVC (stop, flag) or CVCC (jump, milk) words.
Children often drop the second consonant when spelling blends, writing sop for stop or jup for jump. Slow segmenting with fingers catches it: s, t, o, p is four sounds, four fingers, four letters.
Tricky words
Some very common words do not follow the rules yet, or at all: the, was, said, of, you. These are taught by sight alongside phonics, a few at a time, so children can read simple sentences early. They are not a reason to abandon sounding out; most of the word is usually still decodable (said has a normal s and d).
A ten-minute daily routine
Little and often beats a long weekly session. Ten minutes a day for a term will take most children from letter sounds to reading simple sentences.
- Two minutes: flash through the sounds learned so far. Say each sound, not the letter name.
- Three minutes: blend six to eight words made only from those sounds. Sound buttons, then swipe.
- Three minutes: segment and write four words. Fingers first, then letters.
- Two minutes: read two or three short sentences, or a page of a decodable reader that uses only taught sounds.
Common mistakes when teaching phonics
- Adding uh to consonants (buh, cuh, duh). It makes blending nearly impossible.
- Moving on before the short vowels are secure.
- Using books with untaught sounds too early. Decodable readers exist for a reason.
- Teaching letter names first, so children try to read by naming letters.
- Treating tricky words as evidence that phonics does not work. English is mostly regular; the exceptions are a short list.