When I worked in the public system, my district used Houghton Mifflin for their main literacy, and it dedicated a whole section to ‘templates’ which basically was a list of sounds and eventually words that the children had to segment and blend every day. The sounds eventually became more complex to include dipthongs and words.
The curriculum is very expensive as it is designed for public school systems, but I have used the principles of segementing (separating sounds) and blending (blending two or more sounds) when teaching my children. Taking a page from Houghton Mifflin, I spend some dedicated time practicing these skills outside of reading books.
Using the simple example of ‘dog’:
NOTE: letters in quotes are letters or spelling; letters in / are sounds
- Show the word. Point to the first sound and ask, “Sound?” (answer /d/ not the letter d)
- Point to second sound and and ask, “Sound?” (answer /o/).
- Using your finger (or a marker) draw a line under both ‘d’ and ‘o’ and say, “Blend.” (answer /do/)
- Point to third sound and ask, "Sound?’ (answer /g/)
5.Draw line under d-o-g and say ‘Blend?’ (answer /do-g/)
- Draw a line under d-o-g and ask, “Word?” (answer /dog/)
I know this seems kind of tedious, but it really helps especially when they start decoding longer words. (dipthongs are taught as one sound i.e. fried is taught as /f/ - /r/ - /i/ - /d/ and other phenomenon such as ‘the silent e’ is taught ‘a_e’ says /a/ and ‘i_e’ says /i/ ) in Houghton Mifflin.
I suggest you set aside some time to just decode words everyday. Not all literacy programs teaches phonemes (sounds) the same way (e.g. the above program teaches ‘igh’ says /i/, but others might say /i/ and the ‘g’ and ‘h’ are silent). You can go back to the program you used or find a new list of phonemes and just practice segmenting and blending sounds/words,
To make it interesting and not the same old same old, you can use themed words in a high-interest subject, make it a game, make a score board and see how many points (words) he can get, etc.
Some links I found may or may not be helpful (target words to search for: phonics, decoding, phonemic awareness)
•Learnzillion.com has lesson videos
•Activitiy ideas: https://pals.virginia.edu/activities-PA-SLS-1-3.html
• Whole chapter including explanation, list, and games http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/103316/chapters/Phonics-and-Decoding.aspx
I will keep looking to see if I can find actual templates, if you are interested. I hope this is helpful.