As students progress through the grades, they begin to learn more complex phonics patterns. They begin by learning the most commonly used spelling of a word, called the Basic Code, and then, as they get older, they learn additional spellings, called the Advanced Code. As a tutor, you'll have to identify where they are along this continuum of learning and consider whether or not your student needs to learn the Basic or Advanced Codes for different sounds. To better understand the distinction between these two types of spelling patterns, you'll build your knowledge about the difference between Basic and Advanced Code.

A you watch, consider: What is the difference between Basic and Advanced Code, and how does a structured phonics approach support phonics acquisition?

Now that you know a bit more about how the distinction between Basic and Advanced Code helps students learn all 150 spelling combinations, you'll examine the phonics skills students learn across the grade levels.

For a two-page document from CKLA that shows all of the Basic and Advanced Code Spellings, click here.

Phonics Scope and Sequence

As you examine the phonics skills that are taught and developed across the grades, consider: How does phonics knowledge build across time to support more advanced skills? Then, click on the audio below to check your answer.

Anchor Standard:

Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.3)

Kindergarten

First Grade

Second Grade

Third Grade

Fourth & Fifth Grade

Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.
Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.
Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.
Use knowledge that every syllable must have a vowel sound to determine the number of syllables in a printed word.
Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables.
Read words with inflectional endings.
Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.

Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.
Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.
Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.
Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.
Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.
Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.

Identify and know the meaning of the most common prefixes and derivational suffixes.
Decode words with common Latin suffixes.
Decode multisyllable words.
Read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.

Use combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology (e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context.

Key Idea: The alphabetic code must be taught explicitly and systematically. Explicit, systematic instruction in sound symbol associations allows students to experience success in phonics and word recognition by providing the knowledge and skills that lead to proficient decoding.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. (2020). ELA Common Core State Standard. Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington D.C.

CKLA. (2021). Basic and Advanced Code. Retrieved from https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CKLA_G2_U1_TG_web.pdf . This work is based on an original work of the Core Knowledge® Foundation made available through licensing under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This does not in any way imply that the Core Knowledge Foundation endorses this work.