Some children get the hang of reading easily and become fluent readers. Is there any point in taking them through a structured phonics programme?
As children progress through their education, words get longer. Children need strategies to divide them into syllables and to spell them accurately.
Many fluent readers, particularly ones with good visual memories, are good spellers. Some, though, are not. If a child can’t remember the shape of a word, what other strategies are there for learning to spell – in a language with more than a million words made of 44 sounds and roughly 150 different representations for those sounds?
Children have to be able to break down a word into syllables and, within each syllable, into sounds. They then need to know which graphemes represent those sounds.
Phonics is a methodical and effective way of learning our complex English Phonic Code. Even if they’re fluent readers, children who do not have good visual memories will need it to become not only good readers but also good spellers.