What Phonics Hero Teaches

Research shows that the most successful readers and spellers start with a systematic approach to phonics – it’s called synthetic phonics and it is the core of Phonics Hero. Our team of education experts have created over 850 fun, varied and motivating games which take your child step-by-step through 3 years of content, moving from sounding out their first word to independent reading.

How Does Phonics Hero Teach Synthetic Phonics?

Phonics Hero will teach your child how to read and spell with each of the critical 44 sounds in the English language. The games build reading and spelling skills gradually, holding your child’s hand through the basics before they attempt the skill independently.

Each level systematically teaches your child to read and spell

Here is level 1: this child has moved through all six synthetic phonics skills to unlock the hero!

Each of the six skills include up to 40 games which will practise the following:

Step 1 – Knowing the sounds:

Your child will learn a group of sounds and to match the sound with a letter.

Step 2 – Read with these sounds:

Your child learns to blend (stick) these sounds together to read unknown words. For example, when a child sees the word ‘pot’ they read each individual sound: p-o-t before blending them together to read the word ‘pot’!

Step 3 – Spell with these sounds:

Next, your child is taught to listen for the sounds in a word and to identify the letter associated with it. For example, your child says the word ‘pot’ and identifies that they can hear a ‘p’ sound which is represented by the letter ‘P’, an ‘o’ sound represented by the letter ‘O’, and so on.

Later, children will learn that a sound can be represented by different letters. For example, the sound ‘c’ can be spelled with: ‘c’,’ck’ or ‘k’.

Step 4 – Read camera/tricky words:

Irregular, high frequency words, or camera/tricky words, such as ‘the’ and ‘was’, are tricky to read but essential because they occur so often in children‘s books and writing.

Step 5 – Spell camera/tricky words:

Of course, children also need to learn to spell these irregular, high-frequency words so they can move onto writing sentences.

Step 6 – Read sentences:

We put all these skills together to read sentences and stories, growing the confidence for a love for reading!

Step 7 – Worksheets:

You can also purchase our worksheet packs to further reinforce children’s learning in the paper world!

Watch our trailer ‘How Phonics Hero Works’:

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