This week we are exploring the intriguing world of PHONICS. I certainly wasn’t aware of phonics until I started my teacher training many years ago. However, once I understood it I realised what a powerful learning tool it is. Now, we must remember that SOME children simply do not learn this way and if that is the case with your child, do NOT worry as phonetic learning and understanding is only one skill of many which we, as teachers, teach.
What is phonics?
Phonics simply means the sounds of the letters we use in reading and writing.
Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. Phonics taught well will enable children to start reading and writing at an early age. It helps children hear, identify and use the different sounds which make up words.
I suppose you could say that the written language is like a code. Unlock the code and you open the door to reading and writing. If children know the sounds of individual letters and how they sound when combined, they will be able to start decoding words as they read. This also relates to writing. If our children can sound out a word in their head and know what the written representations are for those sounds, they are able to write.
Of course we know that not all words can be sounded out for reading and writing (take ‘the’ for example) but that’s for another blog!
So. Step by step. How is phonics taught?
Successful phonics teaching is based on truly developing our children’s listening skills and teaching it in a carefully structured way. Oh. And of course plenty of practice!
PHASE 1 Phase 1 is the foundation for all phonetic teaching and learning. Listening. In order for our children to be able to hear the sounds in words, they need to be able to listen. This phase starts from birth, as babies start to recognise your voice, and continues throughout their education. In the early years of their education we play lots and lots of listening games; identifying animal noises, sounds around us, everyday sounds. |
PHASE 2 Phase 2 is when we start to introduce letter sounds. To begin with, the most common letters we work on are s, a, t, p, i, n. The reasons for this are simple. Once children know these sounds they can start playing with them and putting them together to make words. at, in, sat, pin, tap, pat, pan These are just a few. As they learn more sounds the more words they can access. The key is lots of repetition. At school we play many games to help them learn these sounds. ¨ Flashcards - start with just a few and gradually add more. Try showing one card, eg; s, and asking them to look for it as you go through the cards. Then they have to point when they see it. ¨ Try writing each letter on a piece of paper and get your child to play around putting different letters together. Make it even better by using different things, eg; stones, lego bricks, counters, carpet floor tiles. Even, even better is making it physical. Use hoops in the garden with one letter in each. Sound out a word and get your child to jump into each corresponding hoop. I could write a whole blog just on games! It is important for your child to not just practise hearing and reading the letter sounds but also writing them. Just to clarify, we call the sound we can hear a phoneme (f-oh-n-ee-m) and the written letter it represents, a grapheme (g-r-a-f-ee-m). And believe me, children love to learn these grown-up words! |
PHASE 3 Now we reach Phase 3. This is where it starts to get more complicated. Or, in my view, more exciting! The English language is one of the most complicated to learn (great) as not only do single letters make a sound, many words have two or even three letters which make one sound. Confused? Don’t be. Here are some examples but there are more. Sh S and h together make one sound - ’sh’. Ship, shop, fish Some others are; Ch, th, ng, oo, ee, ar, ow, igh Again, we do lots of repetition, play lots of games and do lots of practise of hearing, reading and writing these sounds. One quick game to play (and great if your child does NOT want to read their reading book today) is to write one sound down on a post-it note and say to your child they don’t have to read today…….just see if they can find the sound in their reading book. Of course, little do they know they ARE reading - they have to read to find the sound. Devious? Probably. Helping their development? Absolutely.
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PHASE 4 I think I mentioned before that the English language is complicated. Here we go with the next puzzle to unlock. We know the sound that ‘f’ makes. But of course it can also be ‘ff’. Even funnier still is that ‘ph’ also makes the ‘f’ sound as in ‘phonics’. Take ‘ch’. Look at the words ‘chair’ and ‘choir’. Same two letters but make a different sound. What about j/g/ge/dge? jug giraffe garage dodge That leads us on nicely to, using the technical term, split e digraphs. a-e e-e i-e o-e u-e Spot them in these words… cane these kite bone tune The ’a’ and ’e’ are separated by another letter. The job of the ’e’ here is to change the vowel sound from what we call a short vowel sound (can) to a long vowel sound (cane). |
This might all sound super complicated but our children are like little sponges and believe it or not, they LOVE it! Just play, play, play and they will soon pick it up.
Please let us know if you would like to read more about phonics or if you have any questions.
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