Get Ready For Reading – A Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program (Initial Code)

Systematic Synthetic Phonics is an evidence-based, structured approach to teaching children to read. This method of reading helps children to learn the relationships between the sounds (phonemes) of spoken language and the letter symbols (graphemes) of the written language.

When learning to read using a Synthetic Phonics approach, children are first taught individual sounds and then learn to blend, or ‘synthesise’, these sounds to form words.

This process of recognising and combining sounds to be able to read is known as decoding. In reverse, a blended word can be broken up into individual sounds to spell, which is known as encoding.

There are some words that are used frequently that help sentences make sense. These are called high frequency words. Some high-frequency words are explicitly taught to enable sentences to be read.

The goal is for students to blend and segment sounds to make words until the words are so familiar that the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of specific words is held in the child’s memory and the words are recognised automatically or at sight. This is known as orthographic mapping.

A Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program includes:

Unit One – S / A / T / I / M

Unit Two – N / P / O

Unit Three – B / C / G / H

Unit Four – D / E / F / V

Unit Five – K / L / R / U

Unit Six – J / W / Z / X / Y / Q

A Systematic Synthetic Phonics Unit includes:

High Frequency Sight Word Warm Up

Sounds Warm Up / Word Warm Up

Lesson One: Sound Detectives

Lesson Two: Word Building

Lesson Three: Word Writing

Lesson Four: Word Reading

Lesson Five: Sound Swap

Lesson Six: Sentence Building

Lesson Seven: Sentence Writing

Lesson Eight: Sentence Reading

Lesson Nine: Reading Passage

Lesson Ten: Unit Checkpoint