Word Chaining: An Efficient and Effective Alternative to Oral Phonemic Awareness

Back when my family relied on paper maps for vacations, we once turned down a road that looked like a promising shortcut. A few miles in, the pavement disappeared and we found ourselves bumping along an unmaintained dirt road. What we thought would save time turned into a slow, jarring detour.

Embracing the Science of Reading can feel similar. At first, it seems like a smooth path toward better reading outcomes, but once you begin digging into the research, the journey can get bumpy.

One current “bump” involves the debate over teaching oral phonemic awareness through a popular program. The lessons are fun, easy for teachers to implement, and highly engaging for students. It feels like good instruction. Yet researchers, literacy experts, and teachers have been warning about the lack of strong evidence behind it.

A 2022 meta-analysis by Rehfeld and colleagues found that phonemic awareness instruction paired with letters produced twice the outcomes of instruction without letters. Dr. Timothy Shanahan and Dr. Linnea Ehri have publicly stated that phonemic awareness should be taught with letters, not in isolation. Researcher Matt Burns recently commented on the 2024 meta-analysis by Erbeli et al., noting: “So yes, it is only 10 minutes per day, but spending that much time on PA winds up doing more harm than good in comparison to approaches that require less time.”

So what is a teacher supposed to do? Burns points out that if we truly followed the science, this program — along with many other education fads — would never have made it into classrooms. But they have. The frustration teachers feel when asked to abandon practices they were just encouraged to adopt is real and understandable. As a classroom teacher, I know the exhaustion of constantly being told to change without clear explanations or meaningful training.

Yet, as I continue this journey to understand and apply the science, I’ve learned to accept the bumps and detours — and to change my practice when the evidence shows something works better. Professor Pamela Snow has recently reminded us, “Science is ultimately self-correcting over time, so these debates are important and mean we need to refresh our conceptual frameworks and everyday practice.”

If you’re also considering a shift, you might consider reducing oral-only phonemic awareness instruction time and replacing it with word chaining. This classroom video demonstrates word chaining as outlined in the UFLI Foundations program. Program creator Holly Lane explains:

“Phonemic awareness is the mental capacity to attend to and manipulate speech sounds. Any instruction that promotes the development of that mental capacity is phonemic awareness instruction. If it includes letters, it is ALSO phonics instruction, but it is still phonemic awareness instruction. In fact, it’s more effective phonemic awareness instruction!”

Word chaining allows students to practice both encoding and decoding, and it helps make the abstract ideas of blending and segmenting phonemes more concrete.

When I used Heggerty in my classroom, I noticed some gains in phonemic awareness scores, but I didn’t see improvement in students’ ability to blend words — which is the real goal of reading. That classroom experience mirrors what research is showing. After shifting to word chains, I saw significant growth in my kindergarteners’ ability to blend CVC words, especially nonsense words. Students also began attending to all the sounds instead of guessing based on the first one or two. This aligns with the findings of McCandliss et al. (2003).

And if you already include a word chaining routine, you might consider replacing Heggerty with a 10 minute handwriting routine that you can read about here.

It’s tempting to hope for shortcuts and silver bullets in education. But I’ve learned that following the science is often slower, dustier, and far less glamorous than we wish. Let’s travel this road together — sharing, supporting, and encouraging one another — because helping every child learn to read is worth the journey.