The Cornerstone School · Early Literacy & Phonics

Letter Sounds First: A Phonics Primer

Hearing the sounds inside spoken words, matching them to letters, and blending them back into words you can read — the whole code of written English, sounds first. · LB 1573 · ~22 h

FolioUnit I — Listening to Words

fol. 1 Words Are Made of Sounds

A spoken word is not one solid thing — it breaks into beats you can clap and sounds you can hear.

8 min fol. 2 Words That End the Same

Two words rhyme when their endings sound alike, and once you hear a rhyme you can make one of your own.

9 min fol. 3 The Sound at the Front

Every spoken word starts with one sound, and you can pick that first sound out and say it by itself.

9 min fol. 4 The End and the Middle

A short word has a sound at the end and a vowel sound humming in the middle, and you can hear each one on purpose.

9 min fol. 5 Pull Apart, Push Together

You can break a spoken word into its separate sounds and push those sounds back together into the whole word.

10 min

FolioUnit II — Letters Carry Sounds

fol. 6 Letters Stand for Sounds

Written letters are pictures of the sounds you already hear — each letter is a job for your mouth to do.

9 min fol. 7 Your First Letter Sounds

The letters m, s, t, p, and n each say one steady sound, and you can hear them at the start of words.

10 min fol. 8 More Letters, More Sounds

Letters like b, d, f, g, h, and c add more consonant sounds, and many words end with a consonant you can name.

9 min

FolioUnit III — The Short Vowels

fol. 9 The Short A Sound

The letter a in a short word says /a/ as in cat, the vowel that sits in the middle and holds the word together.

9 min fol. 10 Short I and Short O

The letters i and o have short sounds too — /i/ as in pig and /o/ as in dog — each a different middle hum.

9 min fol. 11 Short E and Short U

With /e/ as in bed and /u/ as in sun, you now know a short sound for every one of the five vowels.

9 min

FolioUnit IV — Sounding Out Words

fol. 12 Sounding Out a Word

To read a three-letter word, say each letter's sound left to right and blend them into one word: /m/ /a/ /p/ is map.

9 min fol. 13 Writing the Sounds You Hear

To spell a spoken word, break it into its sounds and write a letter for each one in the order you hear them.

9 min fol. 14 Families of Words

Words that share an ending, like cat, hat, and mat, are a family — swap only the first sound to read the next one.

9 min

FolioUnit V — Two Letters, One Sound; Reading Sentences

fol. 15 Two Letters, One Sound

Sometimes two letters team up to spell a single sound — sh, ch, and th each say one sound, not two.

9 min fol. 16 Reading a Whole Sentence

Read each word left to right, then the whole line, joining decodable words with a few common heart words into a sentence you understand.

10 min

The Examination Desk — sit the final →