Beginning Reading: Phonetics & Phonograms

At some point, you notice that your children are trying to sound out the words they see in the world around them. When that happens, the moment you've been waiting for is here! It's time to introduce phonetic reading!

Our phonetic reading materials follow the predictable rules of English. Our goal here is to help the children realize that they can read by offering them predictable words that follow the phonetic rules of English. That limits us to about half of our language! We want to give them lots of practice at this word-based level so that they gain confidence in their ability to read and begin to develop their capacity to automatically read common words. 

1. Start with Phonetic Level 1 for simplest phonetic words (pink series)
2. Move on to Phonetic Level 2 to add in phonetic consonant blends (blue series)
3. Get your phonogram work going with Phonetic Level 3: Phonograms (green series)
4. Pull it all together in Phonetic Level 4 with phonetic words that contain more than one phonogram including compound words

Next, increase the challenge by presenting words without photos in our Phonetic Word Cards and Phonetic Activity Cards.

From there, it's time to focus in on phonograms and spelling variations with our Phonogram Lists and Dwyer Phonogram Folders.

After the children have plenty of practice with words that follow the rules, they develop enough confidence to begin working on the non-phonetic half of our language. (See our Reading Comprehension Collection for details.)