Phonics Most modern language arts curricula say they make “Phonics” instruction easy.  But we do not want to teach students Phonics!  Phonics does not make the important connection between spoken and written language.  Students are guided to name and refer to alphabet letters as alphabet letters.  They are not guided to say a sound and write the printed symbol, or symbols, that represents the sound.  The only way to learn explicit sound-symbol connections is to explicitly study sound-symbol relationships!  Phonics, which is thinking with alphabet letters and spelling with alphabet letters, does not do this. If the heading on a worksheet is Study the Short Sound of i, and the student is instructed to “write i” in each blank to spell words that contain the short i sound, he will think, write and see “alphabet letter i,” but he will not say and hear “sound i(it).”  In this activity, “alphabet letter i” does not compute as “sound i(it)” except by inference and students are not drawing this conclusion, since over two-thirds of our students can’t spell, write or read at the grade level this worksheet is introduced.  And those who fail to learn to spell, write and read in this grade do not learn in the grades thereafter.