Phonics

**__Phonics__**
Phonics is a learning method developed to help young children identify the relationship between sounds and letters. An understanding of this relationship is very important for beginners of reading and writing. Phonics aims to help children with word identification and spelling and incorporates the understanding of the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle is the idea that each letter in a word stands for a specific sound. These sounds can be represented by one letter or a grouping of letters. The English alphabet contains 26 letters which consist of approximately 44 sounds so it can be difficult for young children to gain a full understanding of these sounds in the beginning. In order for children to grasp the phonics concept they need to have the ability to identify and make distinctions between different letters. Letter identification and knowing each letter’s sound allows children to make word identifications with practice and education.

The content of phonics consists of five stages beginning with single letter sounds and progressing to blends, diagraphs and complex vowel combinations. The first stage, letters of the alphabet, involves children’s ability to recognise the English alphabet. Children need to be able to say and write each letter in upper and lower case letters. It is also important that a child can distinguish the vowels from the consonants.

Stage two is Onset and rime which can be used to help children further understand the concept of word groupings or word families. An ‘onset’ is any consonant or group of consonants that comes before the vowel. A ‘rime’ is the vowel and other consonants that follow the onset. Children often find it relatively easy to break the onset from the rime.

Stage 3 is Blends. “A blend occurs when two letters are pronounced closely together. For example in the word clean, cl is a blend,” (O’Toole, 1997, pp 2). Consonant blends can be grouped into two categories. Those that occur at the start of single syllable words and those that occur at the end.

Stage 4 refers to Digraphs and other letter combinations. “A digraph refers to a pair of letters which represent a single speech sound. For example, in the word meat, ea is a digraph which has the sound ‘e’, (O’Toole, 1997, pp2). The sounds that a digraph makes is one that neither letter in the arrangement would ordinarily represent alone.

Stage 5 is Structural analysis and involves structural changes to original words, including adding endings to words such as in like, like-ed or like-ing or prefixes and suffixes.

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Phonics video - 'Phonic faces alphabet dictionary' - http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=00425c090970528a617b