What to Teach After the Alphabet?
So, you’ve taught your child the alphabet. She knows all the letters by name, and can say each letter’s sound. Woot! Now what?
If you’re mom to a beginning or struggling reader, have you wondered what to teach after the alphabet? If you’ve been looking for supplemental phonics activities online, you’ve likely come across these phonics terms: digraph, consonant blends, trigraph, vowel team, split-digraph or silent-e, r-controlled vowels, prefixes, suffix rules (when to double the final consonant before adding a suffix, when to drop the e before adding a suffix).
I remember the first time I heard the phonics terms ‘dipthong’ and ‘split-digraph’. These terms sounded like a foreign language. Really, these are just vocabulary words and formal labels for phonics skills you’ll be teaching your child.
So if you’ve come across these terms, and you’re like, “Melanie, could you please just tell me in which order I should be leading my child through these phonics skills?” Then, you’re right where you need to be inside this blog today!
Here’s What to Teach After the Alphabet:
- Alphabetic Principle 1:1 (CVC)
- Consonant Blends (CCVC) bend, kelp
- Add ‘s’ – because s can make 2 sounds /s/ and /z/. In the words cats, sets, tips, tots, the ‘s’ at the end of the word says /s/. In the words ‘buns’, ‘digs’, ‘fins’, ‘pens’ and ‘tubs’, the ‘s’ at the end says /z/. So that can take some practice for beginning and or struggling readers.
- Digraphs sh, ch, th (voiced and unvoiced), ph, wh, ‘ng’ (change the vowel in front)
- Silent e – because so far, when your child has been reading words, they’ve only been using the short vowel sounds, a, e, i, o, u. Now, you’re teaching your child the superhero silent e! ‘Cloth’ becomes ‘clothe’ with the long /o/ in front, ‘sit’ becomes ‘site’, like in camp sit. TRICKY!
- R-controlled Vowels ar, er, ir, ur
- Long Vowel Teams or Vowel Digraphs ai, ea, ee, ie, igh, oa, oe, ue (blue), yu (cute)
- Dipthongs (oi, ow) – two vowel sounds are heard, so different from a vowel team
- Silent Letters ‘kn’ know, mb, climb, wr (write)
- Prefixes & Suffixes and when to double to consonant or drop the ‘e’ rule when changing words from ‘bubble’ to ‘bubbling’, and ‘mop’ to ‘mopped’.
In short, there are many phonics relationships YOUR child needs to master to become a strong, independent, confident reader!
If all of this sounds good and wonderful, but you’re still like, but HOW do I teach that, I invite you to check out my course, ‘TEACH YOUR KINDERGARTEN CHILD TO READ – Confidently Model Simple Phonics Skills at Home’.
Now that you know what to teach after the alphabet, go and raise a strong, confident reader!
My phonics curriculum is different, because I don’t just give you a phonics curriculum then leave you hanging wondering, “How do I Teach This?” This phonics course for MOMS has 2 parts – 6 modules where you’ll brush up on 6 core phonics skills you’ll use to lead your child through phonics lessons each day AND Module 7 – has ALL the 48+ phonics lessons your child needs to become a strong, confident reader!
