How to teach phonics one-to-one online

Written by Shari Chung, an English teacher who teaches phonics one-to-one on Zoom.

You share your screen and run everything yourself. Teach sounds in a fixed order, a few at a time. Ask letter to sound before word to sound. Ask for a full sentence, not a single sound. Let the child blend out loud before you show the word.

You drive, the child talks

With young beginners, the child does not touch the screen. You share your screen, you click, and the child answers out loud. That keeps the lesson moving and puts the child's voice at the centre.

It also means anything on your screen, the child can see. Do not keep answers or notes on the shared screen.

Teach sounds in a fixed order, a few at a time

Start with a small group of sounds that already make real words, then add the next group. The first six groups in Ladder Phonics are:

1. s, a, t
2. i, p, n
3. c, k, ck, e, h
4. r, m, d
5. g, o, u
6. l, f, b

When you choose practice words, only use words the child can build from sounds already taught. A word with an untaught sound turns decoding back into guessing.

Letter to sound comes before word to sound

There are two directions. Letter to sound: you show s and the child says /s/. Word to sound: you say sun and ask what sound it starts with.

They feel similar but they are not the same level. With one complete beginner, letter to sound went well, but when I said a word and asked for its first letter, she kept saying “I don’t know”. Asked for the first letter of six, she answered “seven”. She was hearing a whole word, not separate sounds.

So start with letter to sound. Move to word to sound only when the first is solid.

Ask for a full sentence, not a single sound

“What’s the sound of S?” invites one sound back. Give the child a frame instead: “The sound of S is /s/.”

In my lessons, the longest things a beginner said came straight after I gave a frame. The moment I accepted a single sound again, the sentence disappeared. Keep asking for the whole frame.

Blend out loud before you show the word

Put the sounds on screen as separate tiles, for example s · a · t. The child says each sound, then pushes them together and says the word. Only then reveal it.

The answer is the child’s voice, not a button. Once blending works, change one tile at a time: chop and shop, chin and shin. Made-up words like zat or vop are useful too, because the child cannot recognise them as a whole word.

After a song, get the child saying the sound

During a sound song the child mostly listens. Straight after it, ask for the sound in the sentence frame, so the song turns into the child speaking.

Spelling their own name letter by letter needs letter names and order, which is a different skill. Keep it as a short warm-up.

Free tools you can use for this

Ladder Lessons has more phonics games, including one for letter to sound practice, in the paid plans. See the full library.

See the game library