Phonics
What is phonics?
- It is the knowledge of how alphabetic sounds work and how these sounds are combined to correspond to the spoken word.
- It includes the skills of blending for reading and segmentation for spelling. Blending is the skill of building words by merging phonemes together
- this is used when reading words. Segmentation is breaking down a word into its component phonemes
- this is used when spelling words
- A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. It is generally accepted that there are 44 different phonemes in the English language. In phonics the children are taught each of these phonemes and the alternative graphemes (different ways of writing) these phonemes.
- A grapheme is the written symbol of a phoneme
- Some phonemes are written with two letters
- these are called digraphs. Some phonemes are written with three letters
- these are called trigraphs.
- Split digraphs are two letters that make one sound, but the letters are not adjacent in a word (they are split by another letter).
- High frequency words (or tricky words) are words which children are unable to read using their phonic knowledge. These are taught as a whole word.
At Hanley St. Luke’s we use ‘Sound!Start Phonics for Letters and Sounds’, a complete synthetic, systematic phonics programme.
We believe it is essential that both reading and spelling are taught with precision and clarity and that children have sufficient opportunity to practice the knowledge and skills needed for both. For this reason, reading and spelling are taught separately within the Sound!Start Phonics for Letters and Sounds programme, with each lesson having a clear phonic goal and outcome based on either a reading or a spelling objective. In the early stages of the programme, when the focus is on GPC knowledge and word level work, the lessons alternate between a reading and spelling focus.
This approach enables children to gain confidence at GPC and word level and begin to develop automatic recognition of a small number of high frequency words, in preparation for caption / sentence level work.
Here are some useful websites to support phonics. Please speak to your child's class teacher for log in details or for more information.