Not all phonics instructional methods are equally effective. Telling the children explicitly what a single sound a given letter or letter combination makes is more effective in preventing reading problems than encouraging the child to figure out the sounds for the letters by giving clues. Many children have difficulty figuring out the individual sound-spelling correspondences if they hear them only in the context of words and word parts. Phonemes need to be separated from words during instruction. From “2. Teach each sound-spelling correspondence explicitly. ” in 30 Years of Research: What We Now Know About How Children Learn to Read

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