Phonemic awareness and phonics are shown to be foundational skills for reading fluency and comprehension. Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge are the two best school-entry predictors of how well students will read during the first two years of school (Share, Jorm, Maclean & Matthews 1984). While it is estimated that less than 50% of students will learn to read without systematic phonics instruction, systematic teaching of phonics is then likely to be important for 50% of students. Phonics programs vary in their approach using synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, embedded phonics, analogy phonics, onset-rime phonics, and phonics through spelling or some combination. In general, structured phonics might account for approximately 10-15% of reading time, compared to the approximately 2-3% of time spent on phonics in whole-language programs. You can learn more about the studies on the efficacy of structured phonics programs from the report of the National Reading Panel 2000.
Best-suited for students with weaker: Long-Term Memory, Short-Term Memory, Processing Speed (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)