Phonido

How reading works

How reading works

Reading is a code for the sounds we speak, and a child can learn to break it. Here is what happens when a child turns print into words, and into meaning.

Step one

Reading begins with sounds

Before a child reads a single letter, they already know a great deal about the sounds of English. They hear them and say them every day.

Spoken words are made of small units of sound. The word cat has three: /k/, /a/ and /t/. Each of those is a single sound, and a skilled reader hears them without having to think about it. A child who is learning to read needs to notice them on purpose.

Written English is a code for those sounds. Letters are the marks that stand for them. The letter c in cat stands for /k/. The letter a stands for /a/. The letter t stands for /t/. Learning to read is, first of all, learning how that code works.

Step two

Decoding and blending

Decoding means reading the code: looking at the letters, saying the sound each one stands for, and putting the sounds together.

Putting sounds together is called blending. A child says /k/ /a/ /t/, and then lets the three sounds run into one word: cat. Change a single letter and the word changes with it.

c/k/a/a/t/t/cat
Three letters, three sounds, one word.
m/m/a/a/t/t/mat
Change the first sound, and you have a new word.

Decoding does not replace understanding. It is how a child gets the words off the page, so that the words can be understood.

Step three

Why a digraph is one sound

Sometimes two letters work together to stand for one sound. Such a pair is called a digraph.

In the word ship, the letters s and h do not say /s/ and then /h/. Together, sh stands for one sound, /sh/. The word has three sounds, not four.

sh/sh/i/i/p/p/ship
One tile, one sound. A child who is taught to split sh into two sounds will read ship wrongly.

This is why a good lesson shows a digraph as a single unit. The child learns to see the pair as one thing, and to say its one sound.

The Reading Rope

Reading is not one skill. It is a rope.

The Reading Rope is Hollis Scarborough's model (2001).

Watch the rope weave on the home page

Skilled reading is woven from eight strands in two families. Both families grow together, over years.

Understanding language

  • Background knowledge
  • Vocabulary
  • Language structures
  • Verbal reasoning
  • Literacy knowledge

Recognising words

  • Phonological awareness
  • Decoding
  • Sight recognition

The strands for recognising words are the ones that phonics teaches, on purpose, one step at a time. The strands for understanding language grow through talking, listening, stories and wide experience. A child needs both. That is why the rope is a rope, and not a single thread.

Phonido teaching is explicit, systematic and cumulative, the approach the reading research supports.

The evidence ladder

Where we are on the ladder, and what each rung would take.

Nothing above the current rung is claimed anywhere on this site.

  1. Logic model and design documentation

    Achieved

  2. Usability and fidelity pilot

    In preparation

  3. Correlational outcomes, independent measure

    Not yet

  4. Quasi-experimental study

    Not yet

  5. Randomised trial

    Not yet

Plainly

What the research does not support

We say plainly what the research does not support.

Dyslexia-specific typefaces
They have no reliable effect on reading outcomes. All child reading text, in all our programmes, is set in Andika for its unambiguous letterforms, and we make no outcome claim for it.
Multisensory activity
It is not the active ingredient. Explicit, systematic, cumulative instruction is.
A smooth software pilot
It says nothing about reading outcomes, and we will not present one as if it did.
Informal use with children
Recollection, not data. Useful for designing a pilot; it will never appear in a prospectus.

Read on

See how a child may experience reading when the code does not come easily, or look at the three programmes.

How a dyslexic child may experience readingThe three programmes