In today’s post I want to discuss a paper that I just added in the Phonogram University library. I added it to the top of the list because it is very good. The title is What Teachers Need to Know and Do to Teach Letter–Sounds, Phonemic Awareness, Word Reading, and Phonics. In this post, though, replace “Teachers” with “Parents.”
The paper states that the key to unlocking reading magic isn’t memorization or guessing—it’s a scientific process called Orthographic Mapping. I KNOW you have heard of this before and it is of course one of the reasons why I added this paper to the library and wrote this post.
Before we get to orthographic mapping, let’s talk about those evil sight words, because the paper addresses them as well. And yes, it agrees with me, but without using strong words like “hate.”
The conventional sight word approach often involves flashcards and relies on the visual shape of a word. This is problematic. The paper points out that since there are too many words that look similar, relying on visual cues alone leads children to make mistakes. Not to mention the fact there are too many words in the first place. Sorry, that is my hatred for sight words, not the paper.
After making this seemingly obvious point, the paper then discusses the scientific approach that relies on Orthographic Mapping (OM). We’ll call it OM going forward. The paper adds to my, and therefore your, knowledge of OM. OM is the process where the brain bonds three things together as one lexical unit: the word’s spelling, its pronunciation, and its meaning. When a word is mapped this way, the next time your child sees that spelling, they recognize it instantly.
This mapping process is why we focus heavily on foundational skills—because you need the right tools to build that automatic connection. Learning all the sounds of the phonograms is crucial. So is the ability to code words. Discussing the words and the spelling rules that apply is also important to the process of OM.
But OM doesn’t happen magically. It requires two fundamental, prerequisite skills that must be taught systematically and explicitly:
Tool A: Grapheme-Phoneme (GP) Relations (Our “Phonograms”)
To begin reading an alphabetic writing system like English, your child must learn that letters or groups of letters (graphemes) represent sounds (phonemes). These grapheme-phoneme (GP) units are the basic building blocks of the writing system. I’ve typically stayed away from using words like graphemes and phonemes. In fact, there is an earlier blog post about using technical language that is not really necessary. I promise we’ll only use those in this blog post.
This is precisely why our program focuses on explicit teaching of pPhonograms (the GP units):
- Learning these relationships provides children with the knowledge to decode most words in the language.
- We start instruction with these GP units rather than immediately jumping to larger units like syllables or onset-rimes, because as the paper points out, research shows that focusing on the fundamental GP units is the most effective starting point for beginners.
The paper points out that a helpful way to teach GP relations is by using mnemonics—for instance, pictures that are embedded in the shape of the letter to remind the child of the sound. I’ve never utilized mnemonics for the phonograms, but I can see the value. Perhaps this could be an enhancement in the future. I’ve found that hard work is sufficient for most children to learn the phonograms.
Tool B: Phonemic Awareness
Your child must be able to recognize, distinguish, and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) within spoken words. For example, being able to break the word “dog” into /d/-/a/-/g/.
Phonemic awareness is discussed on the Reading page of Phonogram University. It says:
Phonemic awareness is knowing that words are made of sounds that come together when we say them. It’s like being able to hear and say the different sounds in words, like “cat” having three sounds: (/k/, /a/, /t/). It also means being able to put sounds together to make words and recognize when words sound similar or different. It’s an important skill for learning to read and understand language but it does not yet include knowing the sounds as they relate to letters and letter combinations.
How to Practice for Automatic Success
Once your child knows their phonograms and has basic phonemic awareness, they can move into the exciting phase of decoding and reading!
Focus on Blending (The Right Way)
Decoding—transforming graphemes into phonemes and blending them to form a recognizable word—is essential for reading new words. To make blending easier and more effective, teach your child to use connected phonation. Once again, I’ve learned the official word for something I already know about through my experience teaching children to read!
Connected phonation means holding and stretching the phonemes without breaking the speech stream between sounds. If they break the sound (e.g., adding an “uh” vowel sound to consonants like /t/ or /p/—often called segmented phonation), they make blending harder because they have to delete those extra “uh” sounds to form the correct word. If you take my courses you will tire of hearing me stress the importance of not adding that “uh” sound to the end of some phonograms. I’ve stressed connected phonation for years without knowing what it is called. Malpractice???
Read for Meaning, Not Memorization
Once again, this is more in-depth analysis of why I push coding of words and stress the need to read!
Your child needs to get words into memory quickly so they can stop decoding and start reading fluently. The most powerful way to build this sight word vocabulary is through extensive, varied, and rich experience reading.
When words are read in meaningful text, the word’s pronunciation, spelling, and most critically, its meaning, are bonded together in memory. In my discussions of OM in the past, I’ve stressed pronunciation and spelling exclusively. The reference to the importance of meaning I’ve only seen a few times before, but it makes sense that it too is part of getting words into our children’s brains.
This is especially vital for high-frequency words that are difficult to decode regularly (like said or was). If these words are practiced only on flash cards in isolation, the child fails to activate and bond the meaning and syntactic role, sometimes causing them to regard these words as nonwords. Again, if you take my courses, you will learn about proximity. The paper mentions that even if you decode words with children and only use a few phonograms and spelling rules because nothing else seems to apply, OM takes place. I take it a step further by using phonograms and spelling rules that slightly change the sound of words, but are close enough to allow the child to decode successfully. This is done with both “said” and “was.” I teach “said” using the long a sound of ‘ai’. It only takes a couple times for children to remember we don’t actually say it with the long a sound and do it correctly. For “was” I put a 3 above the a and a 2 above the s. The student pronounces it as “w-ah-z”, which is easily understood as “was.” This is called “proximity.”
Also, encourage your child to pronounce unfamiliar words aloud when reading text. If beginners read silently, they might skip over words and miss the chance to form the critical grapheme-phoneme connections needed for orthographic mapping and memory storage.
You CAN Empower Your Child!
We know that mastering these explicit, foundational skills—phonograms and phonemic awareness—puts your child on the fastest path to reading success and confidence. The research shows that this systematic approach leads to strong gains in decoding, spelling, and text comprehension.
When you provide the tools and practice needed for orthographic mapping, you move your child toward becoming a self-teaching reader, growing their sight word vocabulary rapidly and easing their transition from novice to expert.
Ready to start building that confidence and self-esteem?
Enroll for Free in Phonograms Foundations 101 Today!
This free course hosted here at Phonogram University introduces you to the phonograms and starts your child on their reading journey. You will quickly learn the power of the phonograms and be motivated to continue!
