Phonics

Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing the English language by developing learners' phonemic awarenessthe ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemesin order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them. The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole language, a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading (see History and controversy below). Since the turn of the 20th century phonics has been widely used in primary education and in teaching literacy throughout the English-speaking world. More specifically synthetic phonics is now the accepted method of teaching reading in the education systems in the UK and Australia. Why is phonics instruction important? Most poor readers tend to rely so heavily on one reading strategy, such as the use of context and picture clues, that they exclude other strategies that might be more appropriate. To become skilled, fluent readers, children need to have a repertoire of strategies to draw on. These strategies include using a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships in other words, an understanding of phonics. In addition, research has shown that skilled readers attend to almost every word in a sentence and process the letters that compose each of these words. Therefore, phonics instruction plays a key role in helping students comprehend text. It helps the student map sounds onto spellings, thus enabling them to decode words. Decoding words aids in the development of word recognition, which in turn increases reading fluency. Reading fluency improves reading comprehension because as students are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can concentrate on making meaning from the text. In addition, phonics instruction improves spelling ability because it emphasizes spelling patterns that become familiar from reading. Studies show that half of all English words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate to one letter to one sound.

Phonics Assessment
Determine students' understanding of sound/symbol relationships with two types of phonics assessment. The first type assesses a child's ability to associate a sound with a given symbol, and the second type assesses a child's ability to decode nonsense words. The nonsense word assessments progress from decoding common sounds to less common sounds.

HOW TO TEACH PHONICS

Teaching phonics is not dissimilar to learning mathematics. In maths you learn step by step. You learn to count before you add, add before you subtract, subtract before multiplication. It doesn't make sense to learn how to multiply before you understand the concept of counting. You learn in small incremental steps and it is the same when you are teaching reading. There is an unspoken order in teaching phonics just as there is an unspoken order in how to teach mathematics. However, if I may jump back to mathematics (sorry - this site really is about reading!), there can sometimes be hazy areas about what to teach and when. For example, how about 'place-value' - or when exactly do you teach counting in multiples of 5 or 2? When do you teach the 'silent /e/' rule? The point I am trying to get across is, that you do need to be somewhat flexible and be open to go back or forward a few steps if it helps your child. Sometimes you hit that 'teaching moment' when everything has somehow aligned up and your child has that beautiful 'light bulb' experience! You would be very unwise to ignore such a moment, pressing on with your 'schedule'. No, instead you would use that teaching moment to praise/encourage your child's observations so next time you re-visited that phonics rule, your child would be more likely to remember it. I like how Jolly Phonics teaches the order of letter sounds, introducing a couple of consonant digraphs early on - see below:

1. s, a, t, i, p, n 2. ck, e, h, r, m, d 3. g, o, u, l, f, b 4. ai, j, oa, ie, ee, or 5. z, w, ng, v, short oo, long oo 6. y, x, ch, sh, voiced th, unvoiced th 7. qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar