Scope & Sequence

What scope and sequence are you using? As a parent, you should be asking this of your child's teacher and tutor. If they are not following a particular sequence, then they are not following the science of reading.

While the research has clearly indicated students benefit from following a scope and sequence, the research does not indicate what scope and sequence to follow. This means even if teachers are following a scope and sequence, they can be different from one another. So a transition from Grade 1 to 2 might mean pieces of explicit instruction are missed. It might also mean that the tutor and your child's teacher are introducing things at different times. This disconnect between home and school can place additional cognitive load on your child, who is trying to focus on learning 2 patterns at once.

Systematic Phonics

Systematic phonics is an approach to teaching reading in which the relationships between speech sounds (phonemes) and written letters/letter combinations (graphemes) are taught explicitly, intentionally, and in a planned sequence. It is one component of comprehensive literacy instruction but not the whole thing.  The National Reading Panel's meta-analysis found that systematic phonics instruction significantly improved children's ability to read words and contributed to improvements in reading comprehension and spelling.

Scope & Sequence: less complex to more complex

CVC

Generally, the scope & sequence goes from less complex to more complex. Words with 2 sounds such as a consonant (C) and vowel (V) are easier than words with 3 sounds, such as CVC words.

Examples of VC words: on, in, it

Examples of CVC words: fan, tub, sip

At this level, I focus specifically on blending and segmenting skills. If they cannot blend and segment with 2-3 sounds, it will only get more challenging as the amount of sounds increases.

At this level, the students learn the short vowel sounds. I don't bother with bogging down working memory with teaching kids terms like "short vowels" and "long vowels". I simply ask the student to tell me what sound that vowel writes. After all, letters are pictures (symbols) for sounds.

CVCC/CCVC - consonant clusters

The next shift generally moves students to working on consonant clusters. These are clusters of 2 sounds before/after the vowel. Some people refer to this a "blends" but we're always blending sounds to read so I prefer to call it consonant clusters. This increases the amount of sounds they need to hold in verbal working memory and the amount of sounds they need to blend. This can be a big shift for some students. Often, I start with CVCC words because students can cover the last letter and it looks like the CVC words they are used to. This can make the transitions to blends easier.

Example: cats, left, ramp

Digraphs

Digraphs are 2 letters that make 1 sound.

Early digraphs: ck, wh, ch, sh, th, ng

It also includes what some people refer to as "FLOSS" words: ff, ll, ss, zz

Some programs with teach the FLOSS rule: if a one-syllable word has a short vowel and ends in the sound /f/, /l/, /s/, or /z/, you double the final consonant (ff, ll, ss, or zz).

Note about the FLOSS rule: This requires a lot of metacognitive skills. For this reason, these can be simplified by teaching them as another digraph. For more information on this, here is a great article by Reading Magic: https://readingsimplified.com/floss-rule/.

This level is another leap in complexity as the student must remember that there is more than 1 way to spell a sound (e.g., 'w' vs. 'wh'). Some programs will teach patterns and rules. For some kids, that is too much of a cognitive load versus recognizing there are 2 ways to spell a sound, and you may need to try both. This ability to shift between 2 different spellings requires executive functioning skills.

CVCe/Silent 'e'/Magic 'e'/Bossy 'e'

There are many variations and names for this level. Students are introduced to silent 'e'.

• It is at the end of the word

• It makes the vowel before it say its letter name (long vowel sound)

• It can reach over one consonant

• It is silent

Again, the student will need to engage in shifting. This time, from the short vowel sound to the long vowel sound. For students who are not great at monitoring, they are not always checking for the 'e' at the end before reading the word.

This is also the level where it makes the most sense to introduce soft 'c' and 'g'.

An 'y', 'i', or 'e' after the 'c' writes the /s/ sound.

Examples: ice, fence, face

As you can see, sometimes the 'e' will have 2 jobs in these words.

A similar thing happens for 'g'. A 'y', 'i', or 'e' after the 'g' writes the /j/ sound.

Examples: gym, huge, gel

Long Vowels

This can be a really challenging level for some students because they will need to remember there is often more than one way to spell a sound.

One of the ways to spell the long vowel sound is when it is at the end of a syllable. Example: no, ta/ble, spi/der

As you can see, this is a logical point to introduce words with more than one syllable (multisyllabic words). Many programs will teach syllable types at this point; however, if using a more simplistic approach, you may choose to simply teach that the vowel at the end of the syllable says its name. Sometimes teaching all the syllable types is a heavier cognitive load for some students and not one that is very consistent beyond 2-syllable words. To learn more about this, check out this article: https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rrq.342.

Many programs may teach "2 vowels go walking, the first one does the talking". I also used to do this but found it was not helpful for students, especially when they started to be introduced to the vowel diphthongs. Then you need to know when and when not to apply it. I have found it easier to teach the ways to spell the long vowel sounds.

Every tutor/teacher will need to decide which patterns to teach. Many use the phoneme frequency guide to decide which ones to explicitly teach and which ones to leave for explicit or implicit learning later. Here are some helpful charts from Phoneme Frequency: https://phonicsandstuff.com/articles/phoneme-frequency-tables#A-E

R-Controlled Vowels & L-Controlled Vowels

The /r/ and /l/ sounds are often challenging. In speech, the quality of the /r/ or /l/ sound changes slightly after the vowel. This means the /r/ in er, air, eer, or, i,re and ar sound slightly different. Some programs will teach "ar" and "or" as a single sound, but it is actually a transition between sounds, /aw/ + /er/ and /o/ + /er/, respectively. Some students have great segmenting skills and will catch the 2 sounds. For more information on teaching r-controlled syllables from a speech perspective, visit this great site: https://phonicsandstuff.com/articles/vowels-and-the-letter-r

/er/ can be spelled many ways: er, ur, ir and or (as in actor)

The /l/ sound can be spelled in many ways: l, ll, le, al, el

Sometimes, when words are more than 1 syllable, the /l/ is written with a vowel. This is because even though we only hear the /l/ sound, all syllables need a vowel. The 'le' spelling is the more frequent; 'al' is the next most frequent. The 'al' spelling often follows 'm', 'n', 'r', 'v', and 'e'. Again, is it useful to explicitly teach the pattern or is it less demanding to generally state that there are 3 ways to spell /l/ at the end of a syllable and try the 'le' first?

Vowel Diphthongs

These are 2 vowels but these ones do not make the vowel say its name.

Examples: oo (in foot), aw/au, ou/uw, ew/eu/oo

Other patterns that may be explicitly taught:

• schwa - weak syllables are often reduced to "uh" or "ih" (e.g., balloon, open)

• trigraphs (tch, dge)

• advanced digraphs: kn, gn, wr, ch for /k/

The B.C. K-4 Foundational English Arts Learning Program found here follows a similar scope & sequence as above. Typically, students are reading words with vowel diphthongs by the end of Grade 1.

The UFLI program aligns with that scope and sequence and can be found here.

Really Great Reading teaches CVC > compound words from CVC > open syllables & long vowels > schwa > silent e > vowel teams > r-controlled syllables > consonant -LE > closed syllable exceptions. The scope and sequence for Really Great Reading can be found here.

Phonics for Reading teaches CVC, consonant blends, consonant digraphs > vowel teams, CVCe wprds, r-controlled vowels, word endings > vowel teams, soft c and g, minor sounds for ow, oo, ea, prefixes and suffixes.

There are many great programs out there that can be implemented by a parent or tutor. Where an SLP's expertise comes in is identifying programming adaptations that may be needed given a student's specific profile. Some students need to spend more time on phonemic awareness skills such a blending and segmenting. Some need to spend more time on fluency and retrieval. Others may need to spend more time on self-monitoring and error correction.

We also must remember that phonics is only half of the equation. Oral language skills is the other half. Academic language involves vocabulary, sentence structure and verbal reasoning skills (e.g., inferencing). Weaknesses in executive functioning skills can mean poor orthographic mapping. An SLP can help tie all the pieces together and adapt a program to a child's specific needs.

See the difference working with a SLP can make for your child's literacy skills!