Phonics

Most of us have heard the term phonics and equate it with learning how to read. A popular program developed in 1987 was Hooked on Phonics. If you were a student in the early 2000’s, you might remember using this program in school.

Phonics is the relationship between letters and the sounds they make. For example, the letter a can make its short sound as in the word “apple” or its long sound as in the word “awake.”

The goal of phonics instruction is to develop the skill of reading words. First, the child learns the letters and the sounds they make, but in time, the hope is that children will begin to realize that there is an “organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds” (Reading Rockets, 2026).

For children with dyslexia, reading is often achieved through explicit instruction and repeated practice. It is not achieved by memorizing whole words or recognizing word families, but by learning the sounds letters make and then being taught to blend those sounds together to make words.

The English language has reading and spelling rules. Only about 25 percent of American colleges and universities will teach these rules to their educational majors. If new teachers are not taught these rules, they, in turn, do not teach them to their students, unless their school provides a reading program that specifically covers these rules.

The Orton-Gillingham approach considers these reading and spelling rules foundational. Whether a student has dyslexia or not, teaching reading and spelling rules helps every child become a better reader and speller.

So what are the reading and spelling rules? Well, there are too many to cover here, but let’s give an example of one rule that we hope most first graders will be taught. The name of this rule is the FLOSS Rule. It simply says that if we have a word with one vowel that word ends in the letters f, l, s, and z, you must double the last letter. Words that follow the FLOSS Rule are “huff” (a one-vowel word ending in the letter f), “will” (a one-vowel word ending in the letter l), “kiss” (a one-vowel word ending in the letter s), and “buzz” (a one-vowel word ending in the letter z). If we teach this spelling rule, then students will know how to spell words like “off,” “spell,” “miss,” and “jazz.” We do need to point out that there are exceptions to this rule, but usually for a good reason. For example, the word “gas” does not follow the FLOSS Rule because the word “gas” is a shortened version of the word “gasoline,” which has four vowels, not one. Therefore, the word “gasoline” would not follow the FLOSS Rule.

When we teach these rules to students and give them sufficient practice using them, they often remember the rules and can apply them when spelling new words.

References

Reading Rockets. (2026). Phonics: Introduction. https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-101-learning-modules/course-modules/phonics