Teacher’s Manual – Phonics

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Published by: Homeschooling with Ajju

CHAPTER 1
 Letter sounds
NOTE:
If kids knew all the 26 alphabets, move on to the sound.
If kids have not learnt letters, teach letter and sound simultaneously.
That is write A and tell the kids that the letter name is A and the sound of A is ah (as in ant)
Use the actions below to teach sounds.
Also tell them what are vowels and consonants.
(Before you start, Refer the last page for alternative teaching method. Decide which suits your child)

 Actions for the Sounds:

Teach only 2 to 3 letter sound a day.
Teach them the beginning sound and ending sound concept.
For ex; if you have taught sounds of the letters s and t, show them various pictures,
whose words ends with s or t. And ask the kids to say the sound they heard first.
Then tell them to guess the correct letter of that sound.
Follow the same to teach ending sound too.
 CHAPTER – 2
 Two Letter Words
Start with vowels – a, e, i, o, u
NOTE:
[No meaningful words can be formed using only vowels or only consonants. A
word is a combination of vowels and consonants. So we are taking vowels and
adding a consonant to it to make 2 letter words. With these 2 letter words we will
help children to read 3 letter words.]
SHORT VOWELS – FAMILY WORDS
Short a Short e Short i Short o Short u
ab, ad, ag, am, ed, eg, en, et ib, id, ig, im, ob, od, og, ub, ud, ug, up,
an, ap, as, at in, ip, it om, on, op, ot um, un, ut

CHAPTER – 3
Three Letter Words:
Note:
[Do recap for all the 2 letter words. Check if the kid can read the words]
How to teach:
Now the kids must be thorough with 2 - letter family words. So when
you write a 3 - letter word, first the kid has to search for or identify the
2 letter word in it.
Then they will have to identify the beginning sound. Finally blend both.
Check out the example below;
Bat

B - at

Beginning Sound 2 – Letter Word

/b/ ‘at’
Three letter words under each family:
 CHAPTER – 4
Reading Sentences
Once the kid is good in blending 3 letter words, you can start with
sentence reading.

Get a net A tag on a bag

A wet pet Sam has ham and jam
I met a vet A jar is in a tin
A big pig Ben is ten
A big wig Ken has ten pens
Sit for a bit A cat on a mat

A cat sat on a mat I dip and sip

Rat and a cat I win a pin
A man has a can
I am in a hut
A bug on a hot pan
Kim has a red fat hen Hug a bug
A man in a van Sam had a bad rat
Ben had a mop
A sip in a hot cup
An Ant can dig a pit

CHAPTER - 5
MAGIC ‘e’ Rule
When ‘e’ is at the end of a word, it is usually silent and makes the vowel before it say its
name (Long vowel sound).
Examples:
 Short sound Long sound (name of
the letter)
cut cute

kit kite

pin pine

Note: Magic e works only with the immediate vowel before it.

Ex; Dance

Middle

Words for practice:

Cake Rate Tape Pale Game Wave Lame Late Gate maze
Bike Ride Dive Kite Bite Time Hide Fine Line side
Hope Note Rose Rope Nose Poke Code Bone Robe Cone

Cube Tube Mute Cute Rule use Tune Fume Dune Fuse

Lake Take Case Make Date Fade Fate Gave Hate same
Pine Mine File Pile Mile Wide Site Tide Fire Ripe
Node Mode Tone Joke Mole Pole June Cape Wine dote

CHAPTER – 6
 Reading Longer words
(4 or more letters)

Step 1: SPLIT THE WORD

Tell the kids to split the word into pieces of known or unknown words.
For ex; the word ‘animal’ can be split in different ways as shown below.

ani mal an im al

Step – 2: READ THE BITS & BLEND

After splitting the word, the child can either read the pieces one by one and finally the child
can blend or the child can read the first and second piece, blend both into a word and then
move on to reading the next piece. Here the kid will do reading and blending in each step that
is the kid will read and blend it with the previous piece.

CHAPTER – 7
General Phonic Rules
Soft c & g:
When c and g is followed by the letters e, i or y,
c makes soft sound, that is the sound of /s/ and
g makes soft sound, that is the sound of /j/
ex: nice, cycle, Cinderella
angel, gym giraffe,

Words for practice:

Soft c Hard c Soft g Hard g
Face Cake Magic Gas
Ice Corn Gentle Gum
Pencil Camel Germ Got
Circle Candle Ginger Garden
Rice Cuff Angel Goggle
Cyclone Cot Wage Game
Cent Cup Orange Gang
City Cuddle Huge Grate
Cycle Curd danger Go
Cylinder cone Cage Gossip

Final Y – Rule:
 In a 2 letter word or 3 letter word, y sounds /i/
ex: My, Sky, Try, Buy, Cry
 In the words with more than 3 letters, y sounds /e/
ex: very, lucky, bossy, city
U Rule:
u sounds /u/ in a word which has a vowel as a 3rd letter.
ex: unicorn, uniform,

W Rule:
1. When there is letter ‘a’ next to ‘w’, then
‘a’ sounds /o/(‘a’ says the sound of ‘o’)
ex; want, wander, water
2. When ‘or’ is next to ‘w’ then
‘or’ sounds /u/ (‘or’ says the sound of u)
ex: world, word
3. When ‘r’ is next to ‘w’ then ‘w’ becomes silent
ex: write, wrinkle
 CHAPTER – 8
Digraphs
A digraph is two letters that make one sound. Digraphs are of 2 types.
 Consonant digraphs
 Vowel digraphs

Consonant Digraphs:
Two consonants that make single sound.
ch, sh, th, wh, ph
ch as in chips
sh as in ship
th as in thin
wh as in whale
ph as in phone

Words for practice

 Practice Sentences:

Six men on a ship

I got a fish and ten chips
Put the egg shell in the trash
The chick and the chip is on the shelf
The whale is in the ship
Ben went to the shop to buy chips
Chubby boy sat on the bench and spoke with phone
The whale is not white

Vowel Digraphs:
Two vowels together make a sound. Not all the vowel digraphs make
single sound; some digraphs have both the vowel sounds in it where one sound
glides over the other. They are called Diphthongs.
 Vowel Digraphs

Vowel Teams Diphthongs

Vowel Teams:
Rule: When 2 vowels go walking, first one does the talking. And it says
its name.

Digraph Sound
ee e
ea e
oa o
oe o
ei e
ie i
ey e

ui u

ue u
 Words for practice:
oa ea ee oe
coast beach bee toe
boat cream tree joe
oat easy free goes
load flea need aloe
poach peak sheet foe
roam preach sweet woe
soak deal peel floe

ei ie ey ue
seize pie valley true
receive tied chimney clue
reign die kidney rescue
receipt tried hockey statue
foreign cried pulley continue
being pliers monkey argue
deceive flies money blue

ui
fruit
suit
juice
recruit
cruise

Diphthongs:
Digraphs that have the sound of both the letters where the sounds glide
together.
 Diphthongs sounds
oi, oy as in boil and boy
ou, ow as in loud and how
au, aw as in audio and claw
ay, ai as in day and rain
ew as in few, new
oo (long) as in moon, room
oo(short) as in foot,look

Words for practice:

oi oy ou ow
join boy mouse cow
moist joy out town
spoil voyage loud down
voice enjoy about brown
coin oyster house how
choice annoy shout crowd
noisy ahoy cloud owl

au aw ai ay
haul saw laid bay
august paw mail hay
launch raw fail spray
haunt awful waist play
automatic claw plain say
faucet jaw saint pray
 audit hawk raise stay

ew oo(short) OO(long)
few book moon
new foot room
knew wood broom
stew wool hoop
chew good goose
cashew stood pool
view cook bloom

CHAPTER - 9
What is a Syllable?
Syllable is about how long a particular word is. Each syllable will have a vowel in it.
follow these steps to split the word into syllable and to find out the number of
syllables.
1. Count the number of vowels in the word.
no: of vowel sounds = No: of syllable
ex: Computer
This word has vowels, so it is a 3 syllable word
2. Chunk or split the word from the end and split before the consonant.
ex: com|pu|ter
Ba|ker
con|so|nant
Open Syllable Rule:
Open syllable will be in the form CV, c for consonant and v for vowel.
In an open syllable, the vowel says it long sound, that is the vowel says the letter
name.
 ex: com|pu|ter
Here ‘pu’ is an open syllable. So the vowel ‘u’ sounds the letter itself.
That is it takes the long vowel sound.

Chapter – 10
Trigraphs
Three letters together make single sound. Most of the trigraphs are
decodable. So including only the unique sets here.
ear all igh
hear ball high
tear call thigh
pear small might
year tall flight
gear install fright
rear fall night
spear hall tight

TEACHING METHOD – 2
Here we have 7 sets of sounds. After teaching the first set of sounds, you can
move on to blending technique.
Make a list of possible 2 letters, 3 letters and more than 3 letter words using the
first set of sounds.
Start with teaching how to blend 2 sounds, then 3 sounds and then more than 3
sounds.
For each section, practice reading lots of words.
After the kid is good in blending upto 3 sounds, you can teach them to read
simple sentences. (Refer chapter 4 for sentences)

s, a, t, p, I, n
c, k, e, h, r, m, d
 g, o, u, l, f, b
ai, j, oa, ie, ee, or
z, w, ng,v, oo, OO
y, x, ch, sh, th
qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar