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Teaching an adult or a child to read is a fulfilling mission. Deciding what program to use can be quite overwhelming. Below I will share with you the resources, learning strategies, and teaching techniques that I have found as a lay reading instructor to be most useful and easy to follow in teaching literacy. You will find free as well as inexpensive phonics resources listed. You will also find various printable phonics resources.  The techniques listed below appeal to a variety of learning styles.
Get Your FREE Printable Phonics List of Sounds and Comprehensive PHONICS Course – Very Simple to Use and Easy to Expand
For a FREE comprehensive printable phonics program with a printable phonics list of the most common phonics sounds and their rules, an easy order of presentation, and a reader with words to go along with it, I recommend Don Potter's website. This program can be your bare bones curriculum in which you incorporate other activities like the ones I describe below to give it flesh and blood. He also has a printable test you can administer to find out whether or not a student is a sight reader. He gives very good information on how proper blend phonics techniques (blending sounds from left to right) can reverse dyslexia.  Go to Blend Phonics HERE.
Phonics Stories You Can Draw
To make phonics rules fun and memorable, I enjoy using the technique of telling stories described in Lorraine People's book, You Can Teach Someone To Read. Basically, for each rule, you come up with a story in which the letters are the main characters. You can create a picture version of the story for flash cards. For example, she tells the story of “Copy Cat C”, who didn't have a sound of its own and who was given sounds by his friends “S” and “K” under certain conditions. Here is my video demo of my version of that story.  I have other stories on my YouTube channel.
Check out Lorraine People's book below:
You Can Teach Someone to Read; A How-To Book for Friends, Parents and Teachers
If you have a musically inclined student, songs might be just what they need to make phonics rules stick. Almost all of us learned the alphabet through the alphabet song, why not learn other things that way as well. An easy way to create songs is to take common tunes that you already know and put different words to it. Or if you are creative, make up your own easy tunes. Some books, like The Big Book of Phonics Fun (Carson-Dellosa Publishing Company), have already created easy tunes for the rules. Just trying to make up a tune can help a student memorize their rule. The mentioned book also has great lists of words and worksheets for the different rules.
Here is a Task Whiz original Vowel Sounds song to teach the difference between long and short sounds:
Associate Phonics Rules in Pictures and Acronyms
Another way to make phonics rules fun and memorable is to assign each sound a memory phrase whose word each contains the letter or group of letters in question. Each word in the phrase is placed in order of how frequently the sound occurs. A picture is assigned to represent that phrase for easy recall. For example, to remember the two sounds of “c” in the order of frequency in which they occur, you can use the phrase, “candy city”, and draw a picture that matches the phrase. When the student comes across c in a new word, they use that phrase to help them remember when c makes the “s” sound and the “k” sound. Each sound image and acronym can be placed on a flash card for easy review. Teach Phonics has come up with a whole set of flash cards for this type of system of instruction.
The more ways a person can interact with something, the better they absorb it. Stories and acronyms both appeal to the visual and audio learners, but to help reinforce the rules in a tactile, kinesthetic way, I recommend word diagramming. I have my student purchase a composition book in which half of the page is lined and the top half is blank (also called a primary journal composition book). On the top half, I illustrate the story for the rule. On the bottom half, I write down words that have the rule in it and then demonstrate how to diagram our acknowledgment of that sound. As we go through words, we recognize rules we've learned before and make sure to diagram those as well. There are different systems for diagramming, like the Spalding method. Check out the Spalding system below:
Writing Road to Reading 5th Rev Ed: The Spalding Method for Teaching Speech, Spelling, Writing, and Reading (Harperresource Book)
If other people's diagramming systems don't appeal to you, create your own, like I did.  Be sure to keep it simple.  I personally like to use a simple word diagramming system that incorporates some of the symbols used in the pronunciation guide of the dictionary combined with circling or boxing in diphthongs or digraphs. This way, when the student uses a dictionary, they will recognize some of the proper pronunciation guidelines. Here is a sample word diagrammed using my special system.
Get the Task Whiz Phonics Diagramming System HERE.
Get the Task Whiz Phonics Diagramming System for only $10!
Flashcards are a great way to isolate and drill basic phonics rules.  You can make your own or print out a set already made by someone else.  An easy way to make a set of cards is for each rule you are trying to teach, find a clipart picture of a word represented by that rule.  Put that image on a card and then write the selected word on the picture underlining the part of the rule you are teaching.  Then write more words that are related on the back side of the card.
I have designed two special sets of printable phonics flashcards.  One set is FREE and contains the alphabet, as well as different letter combinations that together make unique sounds.  The FREE set is color coded.  Green cards represent consonant letters that have only one sound or are silent (or unvoiced).  Blue cards represent consonant letters (or teams of letters) that have multiple sounds.  Yellow cards represent vowels and different vowel team combinations.  Pink cards represent a few cases of mixed letters that make up a special consonant-vowel sound combination. Get the FREE set of Phonics Flashcards HERE.
I also designed a special set of printable phonics flashcards that literally shows how the phonics rules apply to a word by diagramming the letters.  This diagramming flashcards set is designed to be used with the FREE set of printable phonics flashcards and is based on the written diagramming system I designed and mentioned above.  Below is a word created with the FREE set of flashcards and diagrammed with the diagramming set.
Get the Task Whiz Phonics Diagramming Flashcards Set HERE.
Practice makes perfect. I like worksheets that engage the student to choose which team of letters should be in a word based on their sound. The word is shown as a picture, and part of the word is left blank with two choices. This helps not only reinforce sounds, but it helps reinforce spelling as well. Choose a variety of different exercises for the student to do. There are many sites with lots of worksheets for your student's practice.  Download FREE Phonics Worksheets HERE.
Build a Working Vocabulary of Common Words
According to researchers, the majority of language needs for day to day can be found in a very small percentage of words. These common words should be learned by sight or phonetically. These words will make transition into reading passages of text easier for the student. For homework, I like to have my student go back over their page of common words, find the new phonics rules they've learned, and diagram their words.  Get a list of the most common words used in the English language HERE.
Identify Common Prefixes and Suffixes
Prefixes and suffixes can seemingly break phonics rules if they are not isolated and learned as sound families, so simplify your student's job by helping him or her recognize them.  Prefixes and suffixes are also very helpful tools in breaking down bigger words into manageable parts and in decoding the meaning in words.  Get a list of common prefixes and suffixes HERE.
Decoding Hard to Spell and Bigger Words
A helpful technique to teach how to decode multi-syllable words is to teach students the SIMPLE rules of syllable division. There are essentially only four major cases that determine where syllables start and stop. This technique can be included in the diagramming of phonics sounds, and helps the student know how to break up a word into parts they can decode. Practicing diagramming bigger words is a good confidence booster for the student and its a good challenge for the sight readers that you are trying to retrain. Where do you get words for your practice? Just open the dictionary, or download a list of hard to spell words. Some of these words have origins outside of the English language and therefore are subject to different spelling rules, so try to find the English-origin words. I will soon have a video tutorial on the syllable rules available.
Teaching Reading Phonics for Preschoolers
If you are working with a small child that is reading "ready", i.e. enjoys you reading books to him, tries to "read along", wants to learn to read, I recommend the following resources that are a step by step gradual, but solid foundation in reading: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and The Reading Lesson.
For even younger children (ages 2 and 3 years old), build reading readiness by incorporating fun, gentle lessons into their everyday routines with this resource: Native Reading. I taught both of my children to read before the age of 3 using this technique. Note: phonics is not appropriate for toddlers, but toddlers can learn to read whole words!
Incorporating Phonics Awareness into the Context of Daily Living
Lastly, I want to emphasize ways you can bring phonics into daily life. Words are everywhere. Once you start learning your phonics rules, you start noticing them where ever you go. This is an important way to reinforce phonics rules without using a lot of rote drilling. Go on an outing with a student, or if its your child, just go for a drive. When you are sitting at the stop light, notice street names, signs, and store names. Ask the student if they see “Copy Cat C” anywhere. Help them figure out that new word. At home, draw the student's attention to any label or box or anywhere where a word is written. Look for the phonics rules used in that word and sound the word out. To motivate your student to take more initiative in this kind of "phonics scavenger hunt", offer them a point (or sticker) for every "Copy Cat C" they find.  Then when they reach a certain number of points, give them a small reward.  This approach to learning helps place phonics in a contextual framework, giving it color, dimensions, taste, and smell, as the student sees words through their phonics glasses outside of a classroom setting.