Standing phonics on its head

Through my research into Phonics, I've found a different way to teach it. Most methods out there teach one phonogram = one sound. Student has a list of words to read & spell that matches that one sound study. Once this has been mastered, the same phonogram is re-introduced with a different sound. For example:

Lesson 81: EA = /long e/
meat, seat, seal, treat, read (/reed/) etc.

Lesson 96: EA = /short e/
bread, treachery, read (/red/),thread, tread, etc.

And sometimes EA can have a long a sound, too.

Another way to teach this is in complete reverse. We teach the long sound of E & teach the phonograms that all make the long E sound. Another way is to teach one phonogram and all the sounds that it can make. So a sample lesson might look like this:

Lesson 27: EA = /long e/ /short e/ and /short a/
Student would pronounce these 3 sounds everytime he sees EA. When he sees EA in a word, he would first try /long e/. If /long e/ didn't make sense (example: Mom baked a loaf of /breed/ bread), then the student would read the word again with the 2nd sound: /short e/. "Mom baked a loaf of /bred/ bread".

Programs that use this approach:

The Writing Road to Reading (Spalding)
Spell to Write and Read (Sanseri)
TATRAS: Teaching America To Read and Spell (note: TATRAS has much less emphasis on Spelling & isn't as indepth or complete a program as WRTR or SWR).

Apparently, this method of teaching has been given the name Vertical Phonics. I have yet to understand the difference between teaching Word Families, Progressive Phonics, and Horizontal Phonics, or if maybe all 3 are the same approach? But Vertical Phonics is definitely set-apart from all of the other programs available.