Teaching Phonics Coding to Learners

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to phonics coding through a curriculum we tried. And while the curriculum wasn’t my favorite, the idea of coding words kind of stuck {even though the curriculum didn’t}.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve modified it and made it ours. I’ve been amazed at how coding phonics words has really helped my struggling learner.

*You can grab the free printable coding chart by scrolling down and clicking on the teal download button.

What is Phonics Coding?

So let’s back up for a minute and talk about phonics coding. What in the world is it?

Coding helps learners see and mark certain phonics patterns in words with a symbol of some kind.

The beauty of not following a particular curriculum is that we’ve been able to make phonics coding our own. We use our own symbols and we don’t code every single letter. You can do the same thing.

Here are some simple ways that we code our words {this is a freebie at the end of this post.}:

*Don’t see a phonics pattern you need on our chart? Create your own, like we do!

My Favorite Reason for Teaching Phonics Coding

While there are a couple of other reasons, the number one reason I’m a proponent of coding words is that it can help learners see that words are not just strings of random letters. Words, especially longer words, are constructed with chunks of letters.

This can help both our readers and spellers!

Instead of sounding through every single letter as they read, learners can take a word like TEACH and see/code it as three chunks:  T – EA – CH.

Instead of trying to remember a word’s individual string of letters (N-I-G-H-T), spellers can think about the word in chunks. N-IGH-T. Chunking words this way can help learners visualize the word easier.

Now, is phonics coding for everyone? Nope. I don’t believe that all learners need phonics coding. My advanced reader certainly didn’t. He cracked the code of reading and spelling and never looked back.

But coding phonics words sure has helped my struggling learner become more confident in her abilities to both read and spell words.

 

Grab our free phonics coding chart below:

 

 

You might also like our free sets of Color the Chunk Pages.

 

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky