In this instructional video, literacy specialist Lois Letchford (the "Literacy Problem Solver") explains her approach to structured literacy and decoding instruction. She cites Bev Hornsby’s Alpha to Omega as the foundational text that guides her from basic CVC words through consonant digraphs and blends. Recognizing that the book uses UK English, she stresses the need to adapt terminology for local contexts. Letchford then describes how she supplements Alpha to Omega with the Hear It, See It, Say It, Do It series—particularly Book 3, which focuses on consonant digraphs (TH, SH, CH). She outlines classroom activities from the series such as bingo, word‑finding “snake” games, and rainbow writing, but emphasizes that she creates her own “chunking puzzles” to reinforce specific phoneme patterns, showcasing a set of <sh> ending words (bush, bash, rash, dash, wish, cash, dish, fish, flush). She notes that decoding is only the first component of reading instruction and promises to discuss further components in a future video. The video ends with a standard call to like, subscribe, and share.
Hello, I'm Lois Letchford, the Literacy Problem Solver, and this week I wanted to share with you structured literacy and how I work with structured literacy and the teaching of decoding. The book I chose to use, or the book that I learned from, is called Alpha to Omega by Bev Hornsby, and to me it's been a brilliant book and a really good solid foundation for the teaching of decoding.
This is the first book that I used that gave me foundational knowledge of structured literacy. And as it says, it's Alpha to Omega, from the beginning to the end of structured literacy. And it's a really important foundation for teaching for me because it takes me from the beginning to the end. Bev Hornsby is famous in literacy circles in the UK. And thus the book being from UK also uses language from the UK. And you need to note that because we need to change it. To fit our society and our culture. In her book, I start right at the beginning. She starts with CVC words and then very quickly goes to consonant digraphs at the beginnings of words and also at the end of words, and then consonant blends. And this is what she says here. She says, since much difficulty is encountered with these blends, much work will be needed on So, and that's where I actually close this book and turn over to another book written by a colleague of hers, which is this one, and it's a whole series of Hear It, See It, Say It, Do It. This is a 4-series book, and since it was quite expensive when I was buying them, I only bought book 3, but I could— I worked with book 2 Bought Book 3, but I adapted them and I did not, as you can see, I didn't cut this one up, but I've used it again and again and again, making my own resources. Book 1 was just simply the vowel sounds. Book 2 was consonant digraphs, the TH, the SH, and the CH, and now the ones I want to show you. She has used the same structure throughout, using the same activities. The only thing that's changing are the actual words that you use. So this is part of what it is, right? And that's Book 3. Let me show you how we work with these words. What she does is, if we open up the page, she plays lots of games, bingo, and this one is finding particular words in a snake and then finding words in there. Playing bingo again, saying the sounds, putting the words together, rainbow writing. But I spend a lot of time not doing the photographing but doing chunking puzzles. This is where I spend not hours but I'd certainly spend time making and creating my own resources with these particular words to help my students. Learn to read. Chunking puzzles, they're called. And the first ones that I've got are the <sh>, but these <sh> ones are only at the end of the word, like in the word bush. Oh, that's not a match. I've missed that one. There it is. Bash. And then I've got rash. And then we've got Dash, and then I've got wish, and I've got cash. I don't know what that one's doing there, it's an extra. Dish and fish, and then we've got flush. That's the first part of what I do. I allow my students to take the time. Now, putting the sounds together is only one and the first component of what we are required to do in teaching their children to read. I'll talk about the rest tomorrow.
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