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Phonics and the Research
1. Begin Teaching at an Early Age
2. Teach each sound-spelling explicitly.
3. Teach frequent, highly regular sound-spelling relationships systematically.
4. Show children exactly how to sound out words.
5. Use connected, decodable text as they learn.
6. Use interesting stories to develop language comprehension.
7. Balance, but don't mix.
Read the full research

How to Teach Children to Read

3. Teach frequent, highly regular sound-spelling relationships systematically. [Back]

Only a few sound-spelling relationships are necessary to read. The most effective instructional programs teach children to read successfully with only 40 to 50 sound-spelling relationships. (Writing can require a few more, about 70 sound-spelling relationships.) The chart below is not taken from any particular program but represents the 48 most regular letter-phoneme relationships. (The given sounds for each of the letters and letter groups are either the most frequent sound or occur at least 75% of the time.)

The 48 most regular sound-letter relationships

The 48 most Regular Sound-Letter Relationships.
a as in fat g as in goat v
m l e
t h u-e as in use
s u p
I as in sit c as in cat w "woo" as in well
f b j
a-e as in cake n I-e as in pipe
d k y "yee" as in yuk
r o-e as in pole z
ch as in chip ou as in cloud kn as in know
ea beat oy toy oa boat
ee need ph phone oi boil
er fern qu quick ai maid
ay hay sh shop ar car
igh high th thank au haul
ew shrewd ir first aw lawn

To teach systematically means to coordinate the introduction of the sound-spellings with the material the children are asked to read. The words and stories the children read are composed of only the sound-spelling relationships the children have learned, so all the children must be taught using the same sequence. The order of the introduction of sound-spelling relationships should be planned to allow reading material composed of meaningful words and stories as soon as possible. For example, if the first three sound-spelling relationships the children learn are a, b, c, the only real word the children could read would be cab. However, if the first three sound-spelling relationships were m, a , s, the children could read am, Sam, mass, ma'am.

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