The Phonics Handbook

A Handbook for teaching Reading, Writing, and Spelling

The aim of this book is to teach children to read and write through a synthetic phonics programme. This means that the children are taught the main 42 sounds of English, not just the alphabet sounds. With this knowledge they are taken through stages of blending sounds to form words and then to reading.

At the same time they are taught to write by identifying the sounds in words and relating the letters to those sounds.

The Phonics Handbook provides a programme for the first year of learning to read and write, the first 8-9 weeks of which will be spent learning the letter sounds. That is one letter sound a day. It is multi-sensory, active and particularly suitable for young children.

Step-by-step guidance is given for the teacher, with photocopi­able worksheets for the children. The structured approach is suited to a whole school, whole class approach, but it also works well with individual children. Teachers following this method of teaching can be assured that their children will read and write independently much more quickly. A timetable of the initial 9-10 week programme is on the facing page.

The teaching has been divided into the following five basic skills, each of which has its own chapter in this book:

1.   Learning the letter sounds

2.   Learning letter formation

3.   Blending – for reading

4.   Identifying the sounds in words – for writing

5.   Tricky words – irregular words

Although the teaching has been separated into these five basic skills, it is important to realise that they are all taught at the same time.

Learning to read and write fluently are vital skills for children. All parents know this and want their children to master these skills. The majority are keen to help, but are not sure how to go about it. It is a good idea to invite the new parents to a meeting, where it is explained how reading and writing is taught in the school.

The background to The Phonics Handbook is the method of teaching that has been developed and tested over a period of time at Woods Loke Primary School in Lowestoft, Suffolk in England.
Before 1975, reading was taught at the school using essentially a visual, whole word approach. Most children read well. However, there was always a group of children who had problems remembering words and who could not cope with reading or writing satisfactorily. These children did not pick up letter sounds or relate them to words. It was therefore decided to teach the letter sounds first, to see if early letter knowledge would help them. This proved to be much more successful for the children as a whole, and the group who had problems became much smaller.
This reflects the findings of several research studies that knowing the letters is the best predictor of success in learning to read.
Later, in 1977, the school introduced some structured blending, in addition to the letter sound work. Also, as part of an external research experiment, the pre-reading requisite was that the children should be taught to listen carefully to the sounds in words, to identify them, and relate them to the letters (phono¬logical awareness). This teaching made it much easier for the children to learn to read and write. They became fluent readers much earlier than before, and best of all, the group of children with reading problems was almost non-existent. Since then, it has been rare to have a child in the school scoring below 90 on the Youngs Reading Test, and the average has been between 110 and 116. (Youngs Reading Test is designed so that a score of 100 is the average. It is also designed so that half of all children will fall in the range 90-110). The children learn to read much faster when they know the letter sounds and can work out words for themselves. Independent writing starts much earlier and accurate spelling develops more quickly.
This also reflects the findings of research studies that both blending skills and phonological awareness are strong predictors of reading success.
The key advantages of this system are that it teaches children a) all the main letter sounds early on and b) to relate the sounds to the symbols and so understand the alphabetic code used for reading and writing.


As a result, the children's achievements are very much greater, not only in reading but also in their writing. Because the children have a way of writing each letter sound, they are able to write whatever they want, early on, in a way that is readable.
The system allows whole class teaching with children from a young age, even preschool, and allows parents to be involved. Moreover the higher achievement is reflected across the class, with fewer children needing remedial help.
These benefits have shown up in research studies where the achievements of children with Jolly Phonics have been very much greater.

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