What is phonics?
Language, particularly when written down, is a code. Children become able to
crack this code when they understand how it works. Children are introduced
to the simple, or most common, building blocks first. They are gradually
introduced to the more tricky elements.
Phoneme: Unit of sound.
Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the
phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read and
write words.
Grapheme: Written representation of a sound.
Children are taught the graphemes to represent the phonemes that they can
hear.
How are children taught phonics at school?
Children are taught to use phonics continuously throughout the school day.
Some learning moments are planned, many are impromptu.
Phonics sessions (15 minutes a day): Teachers plan a 15 minute wholeclass phonics session every day. These are based around games, songs and
actions.
Whole class reading and writing: Often, the class will share the task of
reading or writing a text. Children are encouraged to contribute to this process
by using their developing phonic knowledge.
Small group and individual reading and writing: Small group reading and
writing sessions allow children to learn from one another and offer the teacher
the opportunity to quickly identify and address misconceptions.
Independent reading and writing: Children are encouraged to use their
developing phonic skills in their independent reading and writing. It is in
children’s independent reading and writing that we see their true level of
development.
Listening to stories: When reading a story to children, staff will often stop to
ask children to sound out words or to model the process of sounding out
words.
Which key skills do children develop?
Grapheme – phoneme correspondence: They are taught all the phonemes
in the English language and ways of writing them down. These sounds are
taught in a particular order.
Blending: This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are
able to merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This
skill is vital in learning to read.
Segmenting: This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word
and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in
being able to spell words.
Awareness of syllables: When a longer word is broken into syllables, it
become more manageable to segment, e.g. fabric becomes fab/ric
What are the challenges?
26 letters in the alphabet, 44 phonemes, 230 graphemes: The 26 letters in
the alphabet can be used in a variety of combinations to represent a variety of
sounds. Children are therefore introduced to the most common elements first.
Digraphs, trigraphs, tetragraphs: Often, phonemes are represented by
more than one letter.
Digraph: 2 letters, as in shut
Trigraph: 3 letters, as in light
Tetragraph: 4 letters, as in through
Multiple phoneme-grapheme association: Sometimes one grapheme can
represent more that one phoneme.
‘c’ sound, as in school
‘ch’ sound, as in chip
‘sh’ sound, as in chef
Graphemes that don’t represent a sound: Some graphemes are ‘silent’, as
in know and debt.
Beyond phonics (mid-Year 2 onwards)
Once children are confident using the phonic code, they are encouraged to
being to explore the units of meaning within a word. This is vital for their
spelling and language development.
Morpheme: Unit of meaning.
Root word: The morpheme that forms the basis of meaning of a complex
word, e.g unhappy. Many words have roots in Latin or Greek. Many children
enjoy identifying these and using them to find definitions of other words, e.g.
centimetre, centipede, percent.
Prefix: A morpheme that is added to the start of a word. Prefixes often alter
the meaning of a word, e.g. dislike.
Suffix: A morpheme that is added to the end of a word. Suffixes often don’t
alter the meaning of a word, e.g. likes.