Reference book for teaching phonics to adults

Teaching phonics to adults is different, in most cases, than teaching phonics to children. Adults, for the most part, already have a wide vocabulary and know how to say what they want. Some may also have a great recognition of numerous sight words, and others, not so much.

From my own experience of working with adult literacy students, adults who need and want to improve their literacy skills, usually also need to improve their decoding skills. They need help in learning letter patterns, and recognizing them, so that they can decode words on their own. Sometimes context isn't enough to help the learner figure out a new word; sometimes words are shown without any context.

Helping learners to recognize letter patterns can help them decode words by letter pattern recognition.

That is where The Phonics Guide: A Guide to Reading and Spelling Patterns, comes in to play, or any other resource to which they can refer.

In The Phonics Guide, various common spelling patterns and letter combinations are listed alphabetically, enabling the student to more easily find a specific letter pattern, blend, etc., once they know the alphabet.

This guide can be used by both tutors and students. Tutors can refer to various letters patterns and general rules, to help formulate their lesson plans. Students can use this book to help them see examples, and to reinforce the patterns and common spelling rules that they are learning.

Below is a sample page:

Tutors will have examples at their fingertips to help explain the current letter pattern that they are teaching.

Learners will see examples of common letter patterns along with some illustrations to help them remember the sound that a particular pattern represents. They will be able to look up common letter patterns, i.e. blends, alphabetically. It's a great resource for students to use in between lessons.

It gives them answers to questions that they may be asking, such as, When does the letter Y sound like I? The instructor can easily answers these questions during a lesson, and the guide helps to reinforce it when the students need backup learning in between the lessons. It gives the students another aid in becoming independent readers and learners.

The Phonics Guide by Cheryl Paton is easily ordered on Amazon.

Cheryl Paton

Cheryl Paton earns income from qualified purchases made through the links on this page. The above text links go to Amazon.

Purpose Uses of The Phonics Guide

When I was a literacy tutor for adults, I had wanted a go to phonics guide that I could easily refer to - to find out what the common letter patterns for any certain letter sound. I had wanted to know what all the different patterns were that I should cover for my students. My students that were advancing also started asking about particular letter patterns and in which cases did they applied. There wasn't any book like it around at the time, so I started writing it all down, alphabetically.

After I wrote it, I realized that it could be a resource book for literacy students as well as a reference book for tutors. Students could look up letter patterns and combinations, alphabetically, to help them review what they were learning. Tutors could look up common patterns to make sure that they covered them all in their lessons.

For both the tutor and the student, it serves as a reference guide, though it may be used differently by both.

For the tutor:
It serves as a teaching resource or reference guide. For instance; how many l blends are there and what are they. They can easily find this under the letter L. The same goes for R blends, etc.? Many teachers may already know this, but for a literacy tutor that did not have a teaching background, this could be a great help. I had started out as a Literacy Volunteer, and this type of training was not given.

For the student:
It serves as reinforcement, like a dictionary would. It is there as a resource for students not sure of a particular pattern; they can easily find it alphabetically. The illustrations will help to them jog their memory. They can also use the book to help them review. They can refer to a particular section, and create words and or sentences based on a particular blend, etc. They can also start to create new words, on their own, that aren't listed in the book.

This is a resource that can be used by both. The Phonics Guide: A guide to reading and spelling patterns. Check price on Amazon.

Cheryl Paton

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