Phonics ROCK!

So the grade 1 teacher, whose English is the best here, came up to me today and asked me about phonics. Seems she wants me to teach the grade 5 and 6 kids how to read using phonics. I love phonics. I learnt to read using this system. Be buggered if I can figure out how it works now though. Seriously, once you start getting into it, there are so many exceptions to the rules that there can be no rules. But I guess I will have to count on the fact that the words we are teaching these kids are rarely all that advanced and hence less likely to be words English has borrowed from other languages along the way and hence don't follow the rules. So we can talk a lot about cats and dogs no worries. I think she is being quite optimistic about what these kids will be interested in learning - but I will have a crack, because as I said before I LOVE PHONICS!