The phonics rules are organized around the phases of learning to read and spell, or the roadmap to literacy.

Teachers who recognize the phases and assess regularly can meet all their students where they are at--and get up to 95% of them reading and spelling at grade level by the end of third grade!

The five phases are based on the work of Bear et al in Words Their Way, which in turn is based on the work of earlier researchers. The five phases are as follows:

When students learn to read and spell, their teacher must take them through the five phases:

1. Emergent Phase: Students realize separate speech sounds (phonemes) exist and realize that letters represent those sounds.
2. Phonemic Awareness Phase: Students must develop the capacity to segment and blend sounds (or phonemes) and manipulate them--and they must pair that capacity with automaticity in letter recognition (and pairing letters with sounds). They begin the study of phonics rules.
3. Pattern Phase: Students continue to learn phonics rules with an emphasis on rules where patterns of letters represent a sound.
4. Syllable Phase: Students learn phonics rules that cover syllables so they can read and spell the long words.
5. Latin-Greek Phase: Students must learn to work with the Latin and Greek elements in words for vocabulary and advanced spelling skills.

Progressing through the phases is not a natural part of child development. It depends on education. This course shows how to teach phonics rules, which are integral to the middle three phases.