Phonics Scope and Sequence: What Order to Teach Letter Sounds

A phonics scope and sequence is two lists in one. The scope covers what a program teaches: letter sounds, letter teams, and spelling patterns. The sequence is the order it teaches them in. Change the order and you change which words a child can read in the first week, and which mix-ups they run into along the way.

Researchers haven't found one best order. The National Reading Panel compared three kinds of systematic phonics programs. All three outperformed their comparison groups, and their effects “did not differ statistically from each other.” The National Center on Improving Literacy, a federally funded research center, says there is “no specific agreed upon instructional sequence for introducing letter-sound relationships.” Strong sequences still follow the same few rules, and you can use them to check a program or plan your own teaching.

The center's advice is to start with the letter sounds “that enable students to begin reading words as quickly as possible.” That means a few common consonants and a vowel. The What Works Clearinghouse practice guide on foundational reading gives /s/, /m/, /d/, /p/, and /a/ as one possible first group. England's Letters and Sounds program starts with s, a, t, and p, and Jolly Phonics starts with s, a, t, i, p, and n. With those six letters, a child can read sat, tap, pin, nap, sip, and tin.

All three first groups include a vowel, since a child can't build a word from consonants alone. Both published programs leave x, z, and qu until late.

Say mmm or sss and you can hold the sound until you run out of breath. Try the same with /t/ or /b/ and it turns into “tuh” or “buh.” The center calls the first kind continuous sounds, “sounds that can be held without being distorted,” and says they are “easier to hold and blend together when students are first learning to blend sounds and read words.” A child can stretch mmmaaannn into man without a gap between the sounds. The University of Oregon's guidelines for beginning reading say to “introduce some continuous sounds early.”

The advantage is in blending. In 1998, Rebecca Treiman and colleagues tested the letter-sound knowledge of 660 children aged 3½ to 7½ and taught new letter sounds to a group of preschoolers. Whether a sound was a stop or a continuous sound had “little or no influence” on how children learned which letter spells it.

A b is a d turned around. The What Works Clearinghouse guide calls reversals like these “common among children in the early grades” and tells teachers to “focus on one letter at a time.” The National Center on Improving Literacy applies the same rule to letters that sound alike, such as b and v: teach one until students master it, then introduce the other.

The sequence in Direct Instruction Reading, a teacher's text by Douglas Carnine, Jerry Silbert, and Edward Kame'enui, applies the rule to vowels as well. It keeps short i and short e apart, so students don't have to hear the difference between /i/ and /e/ at the same time.

The Reading League's curriculum guidelines ask for phonics instruction that builds “from simple letter-sound correspondences to complex phonic patterns,” beginning with short vowels and consonants. The What Works Clearinghouse guide lays out an order:

• Consonants and short vowels, one letter for each sound.
• Consonant blends such as fl, sm, and st, where the child says each sound and blends them, and digraphs such as sh, th, and ch, where two letters make one sound.
• Long vowels with a silent e, as in cake.
• Vowel teams such as ea and ou.

The guide also says to teach the most common sound of each letter first and to introduce letter sounds one at a time.

The Reading League looks for phonics instruction with “cumulative review including application in reading and writing,” and it flags materials that give students no “opportunities for practice and review.” In a lesson, that means the new sound shows up in words alongside sounds from earlier lessons, and the sentences use only sounds the child has learned. Teachers call that kind of text decodable.

The What Works Clearinghouse guide and the National Center on Improving Literacy both say to introduce each letter in uppercase and lowercase. The University of Oregon's guidelines say to teach lowercase first “unless upper case letters are similar in configuration,” as with s and S or c and C.

Letters and Sounds (England, 2007), Phase 2

One set a week:

• Set 1: s, a, t, p
• Set 2: i, n, m, d
• Set 3: g, o, c, k
• Set 4: ck, e, u, r
• Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

Phase 3 adds j, v, w, x, y, z, and qu, then letter teams such as ch, sh, th, ai, ee, igh, and oa.

Jolly Phonics

• Group 1: s, a, t, i, p, n
• Group 2: c and k (one sound), e, h, r, m, d
• Group 3: g, o, u, l, f, b
• Group 4: ai, j, oa, ie, ee, or
• Group 5: z, w, ng, v, oo (two sounds)
• Group 6: y, x, ch, sh, th (two sounds)
• Group 7: qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar

Both start with s, a, and t, and both put d and b in different groups. Jolly Phonics teaches vowel teams such as ai and oa in its fourth group, before w, v, and x. Letters and Sounds finishes the single letters first.

Ready, Set, Reading! teaches 48 sounds across 75 lessons, in this order:

• Lessons 1–10: m, a, s, ē, t, r, d, i, ea, th, c
• Lessons 11–25: o, ck, n, f, u, l, w, g, sh
• Lessons 26–40: ā, h, k, ō, v, oa, p, ar, ch
• Lessons 41–55: e, b, ing, ī, y, er, oo, ai
• Lessons 56–75: j, ed, wh, ȳ, qu, x, z, ou, al, oul, igh

It starts with m, a, and s, three sounds a child can hold, and the child reads the sentence “I am sam” in Lesson 1. It keeps both pairs from above apart: d arrives in Lesson 5 and b in Lesson 44, and short i arrives in Lesson 6 and short e in Lesson 42.

It also departs from the usual simple-to-complex order in the early lessons. Long ē arrives in Lesson 2, before any short vowel except a, because it opens up more early words, such as mē and sēē. A line over the vowel, called a macron, shows the child which sound it makes, and later lessons mark ā, ō, and ī the same way. The letter team ea arrives in Lesson 6 and th in Lesson 8, before single letters such as n (Lesson 13) and p (Lesson 38).

On capitals, we teach lowercase first. Lessons 1 to 65 use lowercase letters only, apart from the word I. Capital letters arrive in Lesson 66, the same lesson where the macrons come off.

The curriculum page lists every stage with a sample sentence from its lessons.

• Can a child read real words after the first four or five sounds?
• Are b and d far apart in the sequence? Short i and short e?
• Does it teach single letters and short vowels before letter teams such as sh and ai?
• Do the practice sentences use only sounds taught so far, and bring back the earlier ones?

For the rest of a program review, see our guide to choosing a phonics program for an elementary school.