Foundational Phonics teaches reading using Orton-Gillingham methodology. The course is taught from two large books subtitled Letter Mastery Book One and Word Mastery Book Two. Some familiarity with letters of the alphabet would be helpful before beginning Book One, but it’s not required. The two books take students through at least the first-grade level in the decoding aspect of reading skills.
Print versions of the books are spiral bound with black-and-white printing and include images from the public domain, clip art, and photographs. Book One has 363 pages and Book Two has 438. While you can buy the books from the publisher as digital downloads, the two dollars saved don’t come near to offsetting the cost and hassle of printing the books out. The digital books have some color, but the printed books do not. You can print all pages in black and white from the digital file, or you can print only the handwriting pages in color. If you purchase a printed Book One, you can also purchase a set of the handwriting practice pages with color if you think it will be helpful. Flashcards can be printed from the digital file that comes with each book, but you can purchase preprinted cards on heavy cardstock at a minimal cost. Note that the flashcards have vowels printed in red to highlight their special role.
Book One: Letter Mastery
Book One teaches short-vowel and basic-consonant sounds, along with the words of, and, to, the, A, and I. Long vowels, secondary consonant sounds, and more complex phonograms are taught in Book Two.
Book One begins with ear and tongue training before starting the first lesson. The fun and interactive training exercises involve listening and the use of pictures and objects but no worksheets. Eye training is added in the first lesson. Ear, tongue, and eye training prepare students for letter/sound recognition and blending sounds into words. The multisensory approach continues throughout the program, using reading, writing, speaking, drawing, listening, sensory writing, hunting for items, learning American Sign Language, and other activities.
Picture books are recommended for each lesson along with optional hands-on activities. Parents will choose one of the suggested picture books or another that helps illustrate the letter being taught. While some multisensory activities are optional, ones like building words from flashcards will be done by all students.
Proper pencil grip and positioning for handwriting are also shown before the first lesson since children begin handwriting during that lesson. The program teaches children to print letters by tracing and copying letters drawn in a ball-and-stick style that has a slight slant.
Parents might spend quite a bit of time on the ear and tongue training before beginning the first lesson. Those introductory lessons require parents to choose and present the various activities without lesson plans. The rest of the course is much more straightforward with lesson plans to follow. Each of the book’s 26 lessons features one letter of the alphabet. The several pages for each lesson can be completed at a pace suitable for each child. Some children will complete one or two pages a day while others complete several.
How It Works
I’ll explain how lessons in Book One are presented by walking through Chapter 7 (pages 80-92) that teach the letter E. All lessons follow this same pattern.
On the first page, the lesson begins with a photo of a child mouthing the short-e sound. A box titled “Mouth Gymnastics has the parent ask the child to say the following with them: “Exuberant, elephants, empty, elegant, envelopes.” Immediately below this is a picture of the American Sign Language sign, which parents can teach if they wish. The lesson then has children search for things in their environment that begin with the short-e sound. The flashcards for the letter—both uppercase and lowercase—are added to the set of those they have learned, and students practice with the seven letters taught thus far. (The flashcards for Book One include small keyword images in the upper-left corner. Vowels are in a red font on the card and throughout the book to highlight their special roles.)
The second page has the teacher read a story about something with the short-e sound. A structured space that looks like book pages is provided for the child to draw pictures from the story. Optional picture books and hands-on activities are listed below the drawing space.
The third page is like a word search for uppercase and lowercase E’s that are mixed up with several other letters. Children circle each one and practice saying the sound. The fourth page has an image of an elegant lady with an elephant in a park setting. Children study the picture and identify which items either begin with the short-e sound or have that sound within them. (Parents will appreciate having three suggested words supplied for them below the picture, and children might come up with more.)
On the fifth page, students learn to print both uppercase and lowercase E’s, tracing first then copying. Little houses with upstairs, downstairs, and a basement are shown to the left of each line as a prompt for teaching letter positioning. A blue top line, a red bottom line, and a dotted, gray midline also help students position each letter. (This is where color printing for the handwriting pages might be helpful.)
The sixth page has 11 small images, and students are to identify the names of the images that either begin with the short-e sound or have it within them. (Answers are supplied below the picture.)
The seventh page has a frame within which children are to draw something that begins with the short-e sound. They tell what it is on a line provided below the frame. (Parents can help write the word.)
Page eight works on blending sounds that children have learned thus far into syllables and words, such as en, then m + en. Next, they practice reading three-letter words they have already learned. Students also trace and write the word men and build the word with flashcards.
Page nine presents the poem “Eletelephony.” Parents read it, and children tap or clap every time they hear the short-e sound. Afterwards, they circle all words that begin with the sound.
Page ten reviews letters learned thus far with a matching-images-to-letters exercise. Page 11 introduces the letter A used as an article having the long-a sound. Children read the sentence, “The men ran and gave her a fan,” and they add the flashcard for the word to those for review.
The final page for this lesson has children build words of their own from the flashcards they have learned. This is an open-ended activity that might take some trial and error to come up with actual words.
Some Christian content, such as Psalm 8 and the gospel story of Zacchaeus, is included in the reading material, but the focus in Book One is primarily on letters and words rather than reading passages.
Book Two: Word Mastery
Children who have already begun to learn phonics with another program might be able to start in Book Two. They need to be able to quickly recall the short-vowel sounds and primary sounds of consonants; read and write CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words; and recognize the few sight words taught in Book One. Their writing skills might lag behind their reading skills at this point, but that’s okay.
The book’s 15 chapters vary greatly in the number of lessons and concepts covered, but they teach phonics systematically, primarily by families that share phonograms. Some multisensory learning is included in each lesson, but it is generally left to parents to incorporate multisensory learning ideas from page 2 as needed. For example, parents are alerted to the existence of pertinent flashcards at the beginning of each chapter, but after that, it’s up to them to decide when to use them.
Chapters begin with brief instruction about the new phonograms. Sometimes catchy songs are used to reinforce learning. For instance, Chapter 8 teaches “Bossy R”—the r-controlled phonograms: ar, or, er, ir, and ur. A one-page introduction requires the use of the pertinent flashcards. Students then practice reading 16 words that include ar. Next, they read a sentence, and then they copy two words from the 16.
After this introductory page, two or three pages focus on each of the five phonograms. These pages always have a box with words to practice reading, followed by either a sentence to read and two lines for writing two words from the box or a lengthier reading passage or poem. Within the boxed words, those that are irregular are outlined with an additional box, and multi-syllable words are divided by dots.
At the end of each chapter, a “Mastery Milestone Challenge” is a one-page assessment with varying activities, such as filling in letters missing from words in sentences, creating and writing their own sentence using words with the phonograms they’ve learned, circling the correct word (of two possibilities) in sentences, and filing in blanks with complete words.
Occasionally, a lesson will include a box with additional instruction, such as one on page 36 that teaches about punctuation marks. As Book Two explores difficult phonograms with exceptions, more of these boxes are used to explain them.
The concept of syllables is taught specifically in Chapter 4 and then applied throughout the rest of the book when words are introduced in the boxes. Syllabication is taught based on the concept of “open” and “closed” syllables (explained on page 116) and does not always coincide with what you find in dictionaries.
Diacritical marks (brēves and macrons) are taught, and after initial instruction they are used to help differentiate long and short vowel sounds in words such as clĕvĕr on page 217.
By the end of Book Two, students will have studied all the phonograms, even the challenging variations of ough.
Book Two does not address comprehension skills, but parents can easily add that dimension by asking questions after some of the reading passages.
Religious and Story Content
Book Two is written for a Christian audience. Within its reading passages are occasional mentions of God, generally in appreciation for His creation, and the words Christ and Christmas are taught in Chapter 15. Overall, many of the reading passages are reminiscent of material from a century or two ago with frequent mention of farms, wildlife, and dated technology. The older style of many images fits with these reading passages. For example, page 274 has a picture of a man in an old-fashioned suit running toward a steam train. The reading passage says,
The man is late for the train! He will have to run on the road so he does not miss his ride.
Wait, Train, wait!
The train has a big load of coal.
It will pull the load of coal to a big boat on the coast.
Summary
Foundational Phonics is easy for parents to teach once past the training exercises and can be used in an open-and-go fashion if you keep flashcards and hands-on resources readily available. Its consistent lesson format simplifies teaching, while still leaving plenty of room for parents to add multisensory learning when useful.