How to Teach Phonics: A Complete Guide for Primary Teachers

Systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) is now the legally required approach to early reading teaching in England. It is also the approach with the strongest evidence base of any reading instruction method. Understanding it — not just following a programme mechanically — makes you a better phonics teacher.

What synthetic phonics means

There are two key words: systematic and synthetic.

**Systematic** means teaching grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in a planned sequence, not incidentally or as they arise. Every sound is explicitly taught; none are left to be inferred from context.

**Synthetic** refers to the blending process: children synthesise (blend) separately decoded sounds into whole words. c-a-t → cat. This is different from analytic phonics (breaking down whole words) or the 'look and say' method (memorising whole words).

The phonics phases

Most SSP programmes in England use a phase structure (Letters and Sounds, though superseded, established the common framework):

Phase 1: oral blending and segmenting; environmental sounds; rhyme. Pre-phonics but phonemic awareness foundation.

Phase 2: first 19 graphemes (s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss). First decodable books. Tricky words: I, the, to.

Phase 3: remaining consonant and vowel digraphs (ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er). More tricky words.

Phase 4: no new graphemes — blending and segmenting adjacent consonants (CCVC: frog, CVCC: tent).

Phase 5: alternative spellings of known sounds (e.g. a-e, ai, ay all make the /eɪ/ sound). Alternative pronunciations of known graphemes.

Phase 6: spelling focus — prefixes, suffixes, past tense, doubling, dropping 'e'.

What effective phonics teaching looks like

A typical 20-minute phonics session has four parts: revisit/review (previously taught GPCs), teach (the new GPC), practise (reading and spelling with the new GPC), and apply (reading a text or writing sentences containing it). The sequence matters; jumping to application before consolidation produces unstable learning.

Pace matters. The SSP approach is fast — a new GPC every few days in early phases. Teachers who slow it down significantly disadvantage their children. Children who know more GPCs can decode more words; early decodability accelerates reading progress rapidly.

Decodable books matter. Books matched to children's current phonics knowledge (using only GPCs already taught) build fluency and confidence. Books with words children cannot yet decode force guessing strategies — the exact habits SSP is designed to prevent.

The common mistakes

Mixing methods. Using phonics alongside 'look and say' high-frequency word memorisation, or encouraging children to 'use the picture as a clue', undermines the message that print is decodable. Every word can be decoded; some decoding takes more experience than others.

Skipping consolidation. A child who learned the 'igh' GPC today needs many encounters with it across different words before it is secure. Rushing to the next GPC before consolidation produces thin knowledge.

Treating struggling decoders as having a reading difficulty. Most children who are behind in phonics at the end of Year 1 are behind because they haven't had enough practice, not because they have a processing difficulty. Systematic phonics intervention (catch-up) works for almost all of them.