What it is. A word is made of sounds, and each sound gets a letter.
Why our test works. Counting sounds before writing stops the child guessing the whole word from its shape. It is the same move as clapping words in grammar, one level down — there the unit was the word, here it is the sound inside it.
Leans on. Lesson 5 — every letter is now available to them.
Watch for. A child who writes the first and last sound and skips the middle is hearing the word as a shape. Slow the word down, do not repeat it louder.
Write a short word by saying its sounds and writing a letter for each. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher says a three-sound word slowly, taps once per sound, and writes one letter per tap The class reads the teaching page printed at the top of the sheet — our own writing, so a child who was absent can still get the lesson.
You open by saying where this sits — what it follows and what it is part of — in one sentence, and then you give them the reason it matters, in your own words, for about ten seconds.
Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher says a three-sound word slowly, taps once per sound, and writes one letter per tap. The taps stay visible as marks on the board. The board copy is what they look back at when they stall, so it stays there for the whole lesson.
The We-do is the main whiteboard moment of the lesson — short answers, boards up on your signal, every child visible at once. Class taps the sounds of two words with the teacher before any letter is written, then writes each letter as it is tapped. If the answer is a whole sentence rather than a word, take it on the printed sheet instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.
They read the teaching page — printed at the top of today's sheet — with you, either read-aloud or FASE, never round robin. Stop at the worked example and let them look at it.
Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves. Then they work alone: Write three words the teacher says, one letter per sound: cat, lip, top.
You close on the exit direction — Tap the sounds in your best word. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: One sound, one letter.
A child who writes the first and last sound and skips the middle is hearing the word as a shape. Slow the word down, do not repeat it louder.