What is Phonics?

Once students have a solid awareness of some phonemes, phonemic awareness instruction should be paired with explicit, systematic phonics and spelling instruction.  Explicit instruction means the teacher directly and clearly teaches letter-sound relationships. Systematic instruction means the skills are taught following a planned, logical sequence. This ensures that students are making necessary connections between the sounds they hear in words and the letters that represent them. It significantly helps struggling readers, students with dyslexia, and children from all backgrounds build reliable word-recognition skills.

Phonics skills begin with a student's ability to identify letter names accurately and fluently. Then students begin to connect spoken sounds with a written letter for the reading and spelling of words. It is very important for students to distinguish between the name of a letter and its corresponding sound.  I use flash cards with both uppercase and lowercase letters along with a picture, while students orally fill in responses for each card, "The letter is ___. The sound is ___" 

I use a process called "sound mapping" to teach phonics: 

 Listen to or say a spoken word aloud (for example, the word "bat")
Segment the sounds: Orally count on fingers or use counters to represent each distinct speech sound/phoneme in the word. (for example, the word "bat" has 3 sounds--/b/ /a/ /t/)
Use sound boxes: Draw or use Elkonin boxes or lines, assigning one box per sound--not per letter.  (below is a resource found on Teachers Pay Teachers in the store labeled SPED with Ms Sherr.)

        (for example, the word "bat" has 3 sounds--/b/ /a/ /t/, so the student should say each sound while placing a red, blue, and green counter in the boxes.)

• Digraphs (like sh, ch, or ck representing a single sound) go into a single box.
• Consonant blends (like cl or st where each letter makes its own sound) go into separate boxes. 
Match the letters: Write the corresponding grapheme(s) (letters assigned to a sound) into each box, then write the word correctly and read the whole word aloud.

When used consistently, this process builds the neural connections in the brain that permanently store words for instant, automatic recognition and spelling. It also helps students with dyslexia or poor phonological awareness see how the English alphabetic code actually works, rather than guessing words from pictures or first letters.

Once students become accurate and fluent in their ability to read and spell many smaller words, they begin to build knowledge of words with vowel teams as well as  both single and multisyllable word levels.  Syllables are taught to aid students in their ability to pronounce and spell multisyllable words. 

Some examples are:

• bite
• stomp
• cap / tain
• rip / ple
• e / mote
• cre / a / tion
• puz / zle
• farm / ing

When phonics instruction is taught following a planned, logical sequence, struggling readers, students with dyslexia, and children from all backgrounds build significant and reliable word-recognition skills. This frees up cognitive energy the brain requires for comprehension, as it now can concentrate on understanding meaning of text.

*It is important to note that while many students learn most letters and sounds in kindergarten, some may still need support in first and second grade to achieve mastery.   

Does your child's reading program include an explicit, systematic phonics program?  If you are a teacher, share which program you are using and what you like/dislike about it.  

You can learn more about phonics instruction at Reading Rockets!

Happy Reading!!

Mrs. Lang