ABSTRACT
Phonics seems to always be a hot button topic. Given the way the brain reads, the complexities of our alphabetic system, and the amount of practice students need to learn to read, it is worth mustering the courage to look for opportunities to better leverage phonics instruction. After all, one important purpose of phonics instruction is to develop the brain’s orthographic processing system, bringing letters, sounds, meaning, and context together. Helping children learn to suspend mirror invariance when they look at letters can be slow, brain-rewiring work. Every school needs a program of phonics instruction. This chapter serves as a starting point for organizing beginning phonics instruction and practice. It lays out a sequential path, beginning with single letters and sounds and ending with multisyllabic words. The chapter focuses on blending and building words with word chains. It includes language and a sequence of words for both word-building routines.
