Novice to Expert: The 8 Steps of Phonics

Every reader starts as a novice. This video sets out the eight steps of phonics that take children from recognising their first sounds to reading fluently and writing independently.

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About This Video

The eight steps break down the phonics content that needs to be taught when teaching synthetic phonics. Four steps cover reading (decoding) and four cover spelling (encoding). Each step must be taught explicitly, and the steps are additive: as children move through them, they build automaticity and become increasingly fluent.

The order and time you spend on each step depends on your students. Are they novice or expert at this step, or in this unit? In Kindergarten (Prep/Foundation) you may spend much more time on blending to really consolidate it. By Year 2 you may spend more time on segmenting to spell and writing more challenging decodable sentences.

The rest of the series refers back to these steps, so start here.

The 8 Steps of Phonics

Reading / Decoding — Goal: Reading Fluently

1. Automatic Grapheme–Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs)

Children see a grapheme and instantly say its phoneme.

2. Blending Phonemes to Read Words

Sounding out and blending to read decodable words, moving to fluency: fast reads once mastered. See Practice Books.

3. Read Irregular High-Frequency Words Automatically

Reading the tricky, high-utility words children can’t yet decode. See Camera Words.

4. Read Decodable Sentences and Texts

Putting it all together to read whole sentences and stories. See Decodable Readers.

Spelling / Encoding — Goal: Writing

5. Produce a Grapheme When a Phoneme Is Given

Children hear a phoneme and write, or pick out with magnetic letters, the grapheme that represents it.

6. Segment Words into Phonemes to Spell

Breaking a spoken word into its phonemes and writing a grapheme for each.

7. Spell Irregular High-Frequency Words

Spelling camera words correctly, remembering the tricky part.

8. Write Simple, Decodable Sentences

Writing dictated decodable sentences, the first step towards children composing their own writing.

GPC stands for grapheme–phoneme correspondence: the link between a sound (phoneme) and the letter or letters that represent it (grapheme).

Resources Featured in This Video

The Synthetic Phonics Toolkit · How Get Reading Right Works · Phonics Lesson Content (Training 24/7 module)

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Up next: The Get Reading Right Sequence

Why a clear scope and sequence matters, and how ours builds from Basic Code to Complete the Code.