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An Introduction to Phonics and learning to read

Throughout this article, I aim to provide you with a articulate understanding of didactics phonics effectively in the classroom and offer a variety of strategies and proven ideas to teach phonics.

WHAT IS PHONICS? A DEFINITION FOR TEACHERS AND PARENTS.

Phonics can be defined as a body of cognition and skills regarding how the alphabet works.

In the context of this article, phonics refers to the method of instruction a student to read by developing their phonemic sensation and an understanding of the links betwixt these sounds and how we use the letters of the alphabet to represent them.

This understanding is essential to not merely read well merely to bridge the gap between reading and writing.

With a good foundation of phonics knowledge, students can quickly become confident readers and stiff independent writers.

PHONEMIC Awareness IMPROVES READING FLUENCY

When students develop phonemic awareness and it greatly enhances their reading fluency which is a reading "superpower" allowing students to read with speed, accuracy and expression. Reading fluency greatly enhances students ability to read with intonation and energy that translates into expressive writing skills.

How To Teach Reading Using Phonics

phonics
PHOnics is a enquiry-based solution to improving reading

The employ of phonics, or synthetic phonics as this method is technically known, is an effective and efficient means of teaching young students how to read. For this reason, phonics is the primary methodology for teaching reading in the schoolhouse systems of many English language-speaking countries.

In English, at that place are around 44 sounds or phonemes. Given that in that location are just 26 letters used in the language, and that many sounds have more than ane possible spelling, information technology is helpful that students learn the relationships between the messages and sounds in a straightforward and explicit manner.

To achieve this, phonics centers on the relationship betwixt sounds and the means in which they can be spelled.

It focuses on the letter and sound correspondences to enable students to suspension written words downwardly into their component sounds, before subsequently recombining them to read the whole word. This procedure is known equally segmenting and blending.

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SEGMENTING AND BLENDING

Rather than assuasive students to struggle to recognize complete words, as in the whole word method, or to wait for contextual clues to effigy out what is existence said in a text, phonics teaches students to wait at the letters of a word and segment it into its component sounds, before blending these sounds back together to read the entire word.

For case, when faced with the word true cat a pupil might run their finger under the first letter and make the initial /k/ sound, and so /a/, and, finally, /t/.

Once they have successfully segmented these individual sounds, they then alloy them together to say the word /kat/.

With practice, the speed with which students can look at a word, segment the sounds, so alloy these sounds together to read the word rapidly increases. This makes learning to read through the phonics method the nigh efficient way for most children to acquire not just to read, but to write too.

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DECODING AND ENCODING: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN READING AND WRITING

Initially, phonics reaps rich rewards for students in terms of the passive skill of reading. This is also known as decoding.

Later, the student's knowledge of phonics can help them develop the active skill of writing or encoding.

For this reason, teachers will frequently weave emergent writing skills, such as alphabetic character germination, into their phonics lessons to take advantage of the opportunity to bridge this gap between the skills of reading and writing.

WHAT Nigh SIGHT WORDS?

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Every bit effective as synthetic phonics are in education students to read, they won't be plenty on their own to unravel all the opaque mysteries of English orthography.

English is something of a mongrel language. Over the centuries it has been influenced by the High german, Latin, French, Greek, and Celtic languages, among others.

This fact has led to many inconsistencies in spelling surviving in the modern language. Sometimes phonics won't be enough to decode these words. That's why it is important for students to learn to read some words past sight alone.

Sight words, or loftier-frequency words equally they are also known, are those extremely mutual words used time and once again in virtually texts. Many of them are phonetically irregular and follow no conventional spelling rules. For children's reading books, sight words can account for up to 75% of the words in the text.

Therefore, information technology's best to combine the report of phonics with the learning of these sight words for maximum effectiveness. This is something to consider when engaged in your long term planning.

The about constructive strategy for learning these sight words is for word some other day, for the residual of this article, nosotros will focus exclusively on the education of phonics.

THE STAGES OF PHONICS TEACHING

Before offset to teach phonics, it is helpful to accept a broad overview of the various stages that comprise a comprehensive synthetic phonics program. The following outline can serve equally a useful general guide.

1. THE PRE-PHONICS STAGE

Prior to start to larn phonics in earnest (eastward.g. sound/letter correspondences), there are sure prerequisite skills that need to be developed, including:

LISTENING SKILLS:

Children must be able to listen advisedly to the sounds of spoken language. They must acquire to filter voice communication sounds from other unrelated environmental sounds. This is usually best achieved past the playing of various listening games. When children have developed skilful aural comprehension, the game Simon Says is a fun way to further develop listening skills.

Audio REPRODUCTION SKILLS:

In one case the children have learned to discriminate between various sounds, they should acquire to reproduce these themselves. This is usually accomplished by modeling the sounds carefully for the children and encouraging them to copy these with particular attention paid to the shape of the mouth when making each sound. The popular fun game Telephone is great for this.

SEQUENCING SKILLS:

Information technology is important for children learning to read to be able to sequence not only the events of a story merely the private sounds of the words they hear. They must be able to recognize which sound comes before or afterwards another. They should likewise be familiar with sequencing language such as first, second, before, after, then etc.

We have a complete guide to sequencing for teachers and students hither.

ii. SOUNDS AND Deportment

With our younger kids, information technology can exist difficult to give them an anchor to 'hold on to the sounds of linguistic communication.

To help build such an anchor to these sounds, which will after help in linking sounds to written letters, deportment are often connected to each sound to aid in memorizing them. This is especially useful in the early stages every bit it works well for the nigh basic of sounds.

For example, when making the /m/ sound, children could be taught to rub their tummies as if they take eaten something succulent while saying "mmmmm".

Or, they could open their mouths wide as if they were eating an apple while saying the /a/ sound.

It is easy to come upwardly with customized actions to go along with the various sounds of English and to then teach these to your class. Just ensure that yous consistently utilise the same actions every time for a specific audio to avoid confusion.

After, when students come to segment words into their individual sounds, they can employ these actions to help remember them.

3. THE Letter AND SOUNDS CORRESPONDENCES

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Explicitly teaching the letter and audio correspondences lie at the heart of proficient phonics instruction.

Information technology is essential to empathize a little of the theory of constructed phonics to exist effective here. Hither are a few important points to consider:

Letter Names vs. Letter Sounds

It is crucial that children understand the difference betwixt the names of the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds equally these are ii very different things. For example, the letter c is called /run into/ but the alphabetic character itself ordinarily denotes either a /k/ or /s/ sound. Information technology may seem obvious, only many teachers not trained in the teaching of phonics overlook this distinction and unwittingly make learning to read much more difficult for their students as a result.

Messages Don't Make The Sounds

As the limited letters used in English are needed to represent many different sounds, it's important to point out to students that messages don't brand the sounds, they are just an option for showing the audio. Ofttimes there volition be more than than one way to show the same sound, for example the sound /s/ can be encoded in a number of different ways including as: southward, c, ps. When you are asking your students to write something, you can brand the sound and ask them what letter could they use to bear witness this sound. This type of phrasing reinforces the correct relationship between the letters and sounds.

Avoid The Lazy Vowels

Information technology is likewise important to think that when teaching the messages and sounds to avert making the lazy vowel or schwa sound at the end of a sound. For example, when pronouncing the /chiliad/ sound, make it crisp and short, rather than calculation in an extra -uh sound at the end. This will get in much easier for the students to blend sounds together afterward.

HOW TO PLAN A PHONICS LESSON FOR YOUR CLASS

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The detail and delivery of your phonics lessons will depend profoundly on the specific situation of your students. However, there are some general points that it'll be helpful to consider when planning a phonics lesson for your form.

Keep Phonics Lessons Short and Sweet

To avoid getting bogged downward and wearisome your kids, go along phonics lessons curt. In and around 10 to 15 minutes is ideal and no more than 20 minutes. Remember, we desire our kids to be lifelong readers and that means they need to savor it!

Be Consistent

There is a lot of ground to embrace hither and consistency is key. If your students are learning to read, they'll need to practice and study their phonics every day – preferably at the same fourth dimension each day too.

Continue on Moving

While a lot of reinforcement will be required over the course of the year, research has shown that keeping a brisk pace through a phonics program achieves best results. Don't get bogged down waiting for anybody to get everything before moving on. Yous volition be revisiting the cloth.

Keep Things Fun!

Learning to read should be a positive experience, particularly as learning to read means acquiring one of the most empowering skills a child will ever have. To go on things fun, be sure to comprise lots of enjoyable activities and games into your phonics lessons.

Phonics Games and Activities

I Spy

This perennial archetype is a fun way to go some phonics practice in. You tin can conform it to say "I spy with my little eye something beginning with…" and say a sound rather than a letter. If you wish to piece of work on alphabetic character recognition rather than sound, simply hold upwardly the letter itself quietly.

Sorting Activities

Sorting activities are a smashing style for students to practice their phonics knowledge and can take on an about infinite number of variations. For example, younger kids may enjoy sorting objects into 2 hula hoops on the floor which are labeled with their initial consonant sounds, while older kids might work on consonant blends.

Bingo

Bingo is another very versatile game that can be used to practice sound and letter recognition. Only decide what you lot want to work on and place those into suitably sized grids (9×nine works well). These could be initial consonants, vowel digraphs, or pictures of nouns. If you set upward some blank grids on laminated sheets, you tin save yourself a lot of prep time too. Just write a broad pick of sounds you are working on onto the whiteboard. Students can select 9 of them to fill up in their laminated filigree. Now each student will accept their own unique bingo card!

Partner Reading

Partner reading is a great way to practice listening skills, as well as reading. Organize students into pairs and provide them each with a copy of the same text. 1 partner reads the text while the other follows closely with their own copy. The listening partner helps the reader decode hard words when they accept trouble. After a time, partner's switch roles. This ordinarily works best when partners are of a similar ability. You tin farther differentiate here by choosing unlike texts to conform the abilities of each pair.

Shared Writing

Shared writing is an constructive means of introducing independent writing activities. For beginning students, it may take the class of merely spelling a basic CVC word together. For example, to piece of work on the spelling of the word cat, you could draw three cradles on the whiteboard and saying each sound, in turn, challenge the students to come up and write the respective alphabetic character in the cradle until they accept written the word C a t .

As we tin run into, the teaching of phonics is an extremely efficient and effective means of teaching our children to read and, ultimately, write. It works on training students to be able to hear the various sounds of English, identify these sounds, and link these sounds to the symbols we call messages.

While there are other methods of learning to read employed with emergent readers in the classroom, in two decades of educational activity I've never seen another methodology come anywhere close to phonics for overall effectiveness.

And, best of all, phonics can be a lot of fun to learn and teach also!

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Content for this page has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A old principal of an international school and academy English lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane's latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing tin be found here.  Editing and support for this article accept been provided by the literacyideas team.