Phonics Instruction
A critical foundation for reading success
Teaching Phonics

Structured literacy is an approach that includes explicit phonics instruction and teaches the relationships between sounds and letters. Once students recognize that sounds correspond to letters and letter patterns, and they practice and master those correspondences and patterns, then “breaking the code” of written English becomes a fun and engaging experience rather than a frustrating, intimidating one.
This is crucial for many students, but its benefits aren’t limited to improving reading skills. It also helps students develop better spelling, listening, and pronunciation skills by teaching the connections between the spoken and written forms of English.
Whether your students are old or young, English Language Learners, emerging readers, struggling readers, or students with processing issues such as dyslexia, phonics instruction can help every one of them improve a variety of language skills in the process of learning to read.
To find resources for teaching reading, visit the Reading Horizons Reading Strategies Homepage. There, you'll find an entire section devoted to answering the question: “what is decoding?” as well as a compiled list of reading strategies. If you're interested in teaching phonics to young children, then you can check out our free early reading skills resource. We also have resources on including phonics instruction in high school classrooms.
The Best Way to Phonics

All forms of phonics instruction are not equal. Some programs use an implicit method, which requires students to learn each new word as a whole word and look at beginning sounds, ending sounds, and context clues to determine what the word is. This implicit approach provides few strategies for students to use on the next new words they encounter. Reading Horizons uses an explicit method , which builds from part to whole, beginning with instruction on letters (graphemes) and their associated sounds (phonemes). Explicit instruction provides students with a manageable set of strategies that can be applied again and again to decipher and read new words. It is explicit phonics instruction that has been shown to be most effective for teaching students to read.
Teach Sound/Letter Correspondence Using Multisensory Dictation
