Articles on: Literacy

Phonic-based reading and phonic-based spelling stages? They often do not align!. What to do?

Reading and spelling alignment with phonics

Beyond the Foundation and Early Year 1 level, reading and spelling skills will no longer align. Initially, in children's development, children will be learning to read, spell and write the phonics concepts; whether that is CVC, or digraphs 'sh' or 'ay'.

But very soon, early Year 1 (and sometimes earlier) reading should take off, and move further and faster than spelling and writing skills. Afterall this also makes sense, as only surface-level phonics is required to read, but deeper level phonics and much more repetition to spell and write with the concepts being taught.

The SSP 30-minute sessions focus on:

Reading the phonic concept words
Spelling the phonic concept words,
Understanding the meaning of the list words.
Understanding the phonic concept and the sound structure, whether that is phonemes or syllable units.
Repeated reading of phonic passages to develop fluency.
Transferring the phonic concept into extended writing, in the context of phonic dictation.

The screening to determine the PLD phonic stage is a spelling screen (i.e. the middle skill, given that children will read higher and spell lower and write much lower again).

**PLD does not provide 'in-class' reading groups. **In-class reading is outside the PLD lesson block time and exists within the curriculum-based reading time. PLD does, however, provide home reading books. The PLD 'Stage 1, 2 & 3 reading screen' is intended to determine the children who require decodable reading books and to identify which type of PLD decodable book is required. The following outlines show how to align to reading books:

Foundation level decodable books: https://pld-literacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Foundation-Overview-with-Decodable-Reading-Books-10-07-25-2.pdf
Year 1 level decodable books: https://pld-literacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Year-1-Overview-11-02-26-1-1.pdf
Year 2 level decodable books: https://pld-literacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Year-2-Overview-20-01-26-1.pdf
Beyond this point, research suggests more generalised reading books, as children should have the word attack skills sufficiently developed.

Keep in mind that by teaching students to spell words, they 100% are also able to read the words. So an additional reading screen is not required.

Q: When spelling and reading skills do not align, should the texts match the phonics focus of the spelling focus?

Home reading books? [Yes this is what PLD provides]
In-class reading books? [PLD does not provide this]

Updated on: 26/03/2026

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!