Phonics

 

What is Phonics?

Phonics is:

  • a method of instruction that teaches learners letter-sound relationships
  • essential component of reading and writing practice and instruction in the primary grades
  • Phonics knowledge leads to word knowledge.
  • helps students to learn the written correspondences between letters, patterns of letters, and sounds
  • one element of a comprehensive literacy program that must also include practice in comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, writing, and thinking.

How Phonics is Taught:

Definitions:​

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  • Orthography is “the art of writing words with the proper letters, according to accepted usage; correct spelling”.​

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  • Phonemes- are the spoken form and the smallest unit of sound in speech and  when we teach reading, we teach children which letter represents those sounds.​

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  • Graphemes are the written form of a word and are taught so that children learn to recognize and decode unfamiliar words.

  • Phonics should be taught in a systematic and explicit steps:
    1. Decoding-see a letter say the sound
    2. Blending- blend the sounds and say the whole word
    3. Decoding 3 letter words- consonant, vowel, consonant (CVC)
    4. Decoding consonant clusters in consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant (CCVC) and consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant (CVCC) words
    5. Vowel digraphs- a digraph is two vowels that make one sound ( /oa/, /oo/, /ee/, /ai/)
    6. Consonant digraphs- 2 consonants that make 1 sound
    7. Encoding- writing the word (Spelling)
    8. Suffixes and Root words- prefixes, affixes, Greek and Latin root words.

Activities/Programs for Teaching Phonics:

Assessing Phonics: