English throws curveballs. Take the word beige. Looks simple enough. But ask a student to read it, and you’ll see the hesitation. The confusion. The silent guessing. Because beige doesn’t follow the typical rules most are taught. And that’s exactly the problem — most are never taught the real rules in the first place. Phonics doesn’t just tell you what a word is. It shows you why it sounds that way. It explains that the “ge” in beige isn’t like the “ge” in get. That the vowel team “ei” takes on