Do your students struggle with deciding whether to use “tch” or “ch” at the end of a word? Or maybe your students confuse when they should be using the “-es” inflectional ending instead of “-s”?

To clarify these confusions, we need to explicitly teach our students the phonics rules that apply to words with these patterns.

And then we provide them with many opportunities to practice reading and spelling real words, using the newly taught rules!

But even if you do all this, it’s still normal for your students to forget how to use a phonics rule and fail to apply it to their spelling and writing.

So if you’ve noticed your students forgetting rules and you’re looking for ways to support them in applying new or previously taught phonics rules, this blog post is for you! 

One helpful way to get students to remember new or previously taught concepts is to utilize posters in your classroom that display the specific phonics rules you have taught. 

In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to use my free Phonics Rule Posters with your students! 

What are phonics “rules”?

Phonics is the relationship between the sounds of our spoken language and the letters that represent them.

There are a total of 44 phonemes (sounds) in the English language that students need to learn. Through systematic phonics instruction, we explicitly teach students the sounds the letters represent so that they can decode (read) and encode (write) words that contain these 44 sounds. 

When we teach these 44 sounds through phonics instruction, we follow a logical progression of concepts that increase in complexity as we teach. For example, we begin with one syllable CVC words, which are words that contain two consonants and one short vowel sound. These words are predictable and easy for students to decode.

But when we move to more complex concepts, we need to teach students specific phonics rules so that they understand how to read and spell words beyond the CVC level.

Here are some examples of phonics rules: 

• The letter “s” can represent both the /s/ and /z/ sounds.
  • We use the /s/ sound after an unvoiced sound (which means there is no vibration of the vocal cords when we make this type of sound), such as in the word cats.
  • We use the /z/ sound when it follows a voiced sound (a sound that vibrates our vocal cords), such as in the word dogs. 
• There are different ways to spell the /k/ sound at the end of a syllable.
  • We use the “ck” spelling after a short vowel, such as in the word sick.
  • We use the “k” spelling after a consonant or vowel team, such as in the words rink or peak.
  • We use the “ke” spelling following a long vowel sound, such as in the word lake. 
• The suffix “-ed” represents three sounds: /id/, /d/, and /t/.
  • The /id/ sound is used when the base word ends with the letter “t” or “d”, such as in the word wanted.
  • The /d/ sound is used when the base word ends in a voiced sound, such as in the word jogged.
  • The /t/ sound is used when the base word ends in an unvoiced sound, such as in the word looked. 

*The rules listed above are examples of rules in our English language. We do not expect students to memorize these rules verbatim, but teaching these rules is helpful when they are learning to read and spell more words!

When we teach students these specific phonics rules, we want to provide ample opportunities for students to practice reading and writing words with the newly taught rule.

We also want to provide opportunities for students to read the words in connected text (text that contains many examples of the target phonics rule, such as a decodable text).

Repeated practice opportunities will help store the newly taught phonics rule in students’ long term memory. This is much more powerful than having them memorize the rule verbatim, which is often ineffective and will not lead to mastery. 

How to use the Phonics Rules Posters

Now that you understand what phonics rules are, let’s talk about how to use them in your classroom! 

1. Display one Phonics Rule Poster at a time.
   • As you teach the phonics rule, display the poster for students to see and easily reference in the classroom.
   • When you have moved on to a new concept, you can leave the poster up for future reference, or you can remove it completely and refer to it as needed. 
2. Repeatedly model using the poster with your students through shared reading or writing activities.
   • For example, in a shared writing activity, you might be writing the sentence: “The buses were late picking us up today.”
   • As you get to the word “buses”, you might say to your students: “The base word ‘bus’ ends with the /s/ sound. I am not sure if I need to add an ‘s’ or an ‘es’ to this word. I will check my Phonics Rule Poster to help me. The poster says that for words that end in ‘s’, we use the ‘es’ suffix, so I will spell this word B-U-S-E-S.” 
3. If you have students that struggle with a particular rule after teaching it, provide those students with their own copies of that specific rule poster or posters!
   • Remind them to refer to it when they are reading and writing. 

As you begin to use these Phonics Rule Posters, if you’re not sure what rules to teach or when to teach them, you can check out my course that outlines How to Master the Rules of English Phonics by clicking HERE!

In this course, I explain the rules of English Phonics in developmental order from kindergarten all the way through 4th grade! 

In addition to providing phonics posters that outline the phonics rules described earlier in this post, we also include a poster that outlines the steps for breaking a word into syllables!

This is particularly helpful for your students who have started reading texts with multisyllabic words. Our poster outlines five steps for breaking a word into syllables to successfully decode using student friendly images.

And if you want to learn more about how to get your students to decode multisyllabic words (beyond just using the poster), check out my blog post on that topic by clicking HERE!

Conclusion

Teaching phonics rules to your students does not need to be a daunting task! By using a visual poster to accompany your instruction, your students will be more successful when reading and writing words with these phonics rules. And by teaching them these rules, you will help them become successful readers and writers for life! 

If these Phonics Rules Posters would be helpful to you and your students, you can grab them HERE! 

Happy teaching!