Phonics sets the foundations for reading and is an essential part of any beginners ESL curriculum. The Abridge Academy Phonics Course is intended to provide more guided phonics training in line with the latest synthetic phonics teaching approaches, with the specific needs of students for whom English is a second language in mind.
- Designed for 25-55 minute lessons;
- Interactive slides format with drag-and-drop activities, games, audio and more;
- (Coming soon) homework worksheets for each lesson;
- Suitable for young learners with an A1-A2 English level.
Many thanks to the wonderful Emily Radecki who has created some amazing Koala Go playgrounds to accompany this course!
Important: Lessons marked with an asterisk (*) are available for free tier members. For all other lessons, please ensure you have purchased a paid plan to access.
Level 1
Level 1 phonics focuses on simple letter sounds, as well as blending, segmenting, decoding and encoding simple CVC words. Children love the fun lesson themes and integrated decodable stories!
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
- Royalty (k, j, q, w)
- Let’s drive (r, y, l)
- Musical mayhem (v, x, z)
- Review: Dinosaur phonics
Level 2
Level 2 phonics will introduce long vowel sounds, digraphs, trigraphs and initial / final blends. These lessons are not yet available in the phonics course, but relevant core curriculum lessons reviewing these phonics skills are instead linked below.
Unit 1: vowel sounds
- Magic E (V_e long vowel sounds) *FREE*
- A rainy day (ay, ai)
- I see the sea (ee, ea, ey) – 1:6:4
- Fly in the sky (ie, y, igh)
- Ooh look a book (oo)
Unit 2: digraphs and trigraphs
- Fun at the beach (ch, sh) – 1:9:3 / old 1:7:5
- Under the sea (ph, wh) – old 11:4:1
- This is my family (th) – 1:7:3
- The silent knight (kn, gh, gn, ght)
- Hatch in the hedge (tch, dge)
Unit 3: blends
- Flip, flap, flop! (L blends)
- Let’s grow (R blends)
- The skipping star (S blends)
- Splish, splash, splosh! (three-letter blends)
- The pink king (nk, ng)
Alphabet
This alphabet course is an older course, designed to teach the core letter sounds / names, practice simple CVC blends, and help students recognise both lower case and upper case letters. Some teachers like to use this alongside phonics 1 for additional letter practice.
Unit 1: A-H
- A and B *FREE*
- C and D
- E and F
- G and H
- Review A-H
Unit 2: I-P
Teaching tips
- We opted to offer this phonics curriculum separately from the main core curriculum to give you more flexibility as to when and how to teach phonics to your students. Phonics shouldn’t be the very first thing new ESL learners study, but instead something gradually taught alongside the A1 and A2 levels.
- These lessons all have a similar structure and format. We would recommend therefore that you do not teach them all in one continuous block of classes, instead mix and match them up with core curriculum classes, to avoid learner fatigue.
- For more advanced students or those whose native language is phonetically similar to English, you may wish to just pick out the review lessons of this phonics curriculum to consolidate their skills.
- This course is not suitable for particularly young students (approximately under the age of 3) who do not have a basic familiarity with the concept of phonemes and graphemes (being able to represent a sound with a letter or combination of letters) in their own language. Instead, you should look for a curriculum focusing on developing fundamental phonemic awareness first.
Are there no previews/ homework available for the Phonics 1 course? Also, only one lesson for Phonics 2? Is that right?
Hi Jen! Homework worksheets are now available 😀 Once phonics 1 is complete, I’ll then move on to adding more to phonics 2 – the curriculum is still a work-in-progress at the moment! That first lesson in phonics 2 is there to give you an idea of what the lessons will be like 🙂 Hope this helps! Katie
Hi Katie I am looking forward to promoting your phonics curriculum to a group of 15 kids on Wednesday 6-21-2023. I was also looking for the phonics homework worksheets for new phonics 1 and look forward to the completion of phonics 1. Do you have an estimated completion date? Thank you for all you are doing I have enough to get started. Just needed to touch basics with you .
Hi Dorretta, thanks for the message! Sure, so unfortunately this course has been put on a bit of a back-burner for the moment – it takes days to make each lesson due to all the graphics and interactivity, whereas the focus at the moment is on getting the core curriculum lessons complete (which do also include phonics review lessons in level 1, although more for the phonics level 2 content). I hope to complete Phonics 1 this summer during the school vacation though (July – August) when I’ll have more time to work on this 🙂 There are four more lessons planned to complete phonics 1 (11 lessons in total, plus I may then add in an extra review covering the whole unit).
Thank you for the update: This is the feedback I received:
We received feedback regarding your Fun With Phonics 0621VTP3EE class.
The client shared with us “ The level was right and the teacher and content I feel were fantastic. Thank you!!!”
Thank you so much for sharing that wonderful feedback! Congratulations on your amazing class 😀
Is it me, or is the there no sounds with these slides?
Hi John, thanks for the message! Sure, these lessons are designed to be used in live classes. The listening activities have audio (see the slide instructions), but for other activities the teacher should help the student produce the sounds in class. I hope this helps! ~Katie
Hi there Katie,
My name is Gladys I just purchased the Ultimate curriculum it charged me but is not allowing me to have access it keeps saying this content is for core curriculum and ultimate curriculum Members only. I emailed you from the original email that I paid with so then I changed my email thinking that was a problem and I still have no access to it. Please help me I would have greatly appreciated thank you!!
Hi Gladys, sorry to hear about this issue. I have replied to your email with steps to resolve this 🙂 Katie
Thank you Katie for your patient and quick response and helping me solve my problem. After all the problem was my quick fingers. Thanks again!! Loving the curriculum.:) Thank you for all your hard work!
No problem, I’m glad you were able to resolve it! Thanks for being a valued member of the Abridge Academy curriculum 🙂 Katie
I just started as a free member to try out the content, but unfortunately, I cannot access the free courses.
Hi Kimberly, please see the items marked with a * in the menu above – these are in the free plan. Alternatively, return to your dashboard where you’ll find some quick links to the free lessons 🙂 I hope this helps! ~Katie
Hi Katie! I hope you are well! Do you have an idea of when in the year the rest of the phonics course will be available? Many thanks!
Thanks for the message! Apologies, the phonics course has ended up being put on a bit of a backburner for now – there is a LOT of work needed to make it a more complete phonics curriculum, and the focus at the moment is on the main core curriculum. There is some more phonics content being added to level 1 of the core curriculum though, the idea being that students whose native language has very different sounds/ alphabet to English could complete a “level 0” beginners course focusing on initial consonant sounds and short vowels (a revamped version of this phonics course, with more phonemic awareness activities and a different structure rather than just the alphabet) then move to the main core course, which would allow them to learn the remaining phonics skills more gradually alongside oral English lessons.