Standing for PHonology, ORthography, Morphology, Etymology and Semantics, PhOrMeS is not, simply, a phonics program.
While it uses systematic, synthetic phonics to teach early decoding and spelling, it aims to teach children proficiency in many areas of our deep, challenging and beautiful English language.
The ability to comprehend, evaluate and analyse what we read, and write an array of genres for a plethora of audiences is part of the end goal of literacy learning. PhOrMeS is designed to give children the building blocks they need to achieve these critical skills.
Word Reading, or decoding, is taught in a sequential manner. Beginners are taught to read short, simple, phonetically regular words and progress to increasingly more difficult words across their primary schooling.
Spelling is best taught side-by-side with word reading/decoding. This is what PhOrMeS does. Students are taught to spell words with the same target graphemes, spelling rules, morphological concepts or etymological roots they are learning to read.
Phonemic Awareness is both taught separately and embedded in word reading and spelling activities and reading Fluency is practised daily.
