How to teach Phonics
What is phonics?
Phonics is a method to teach children how to read using sounds. Phonics is all about sounds. This is a detailed phonics step by step guide which lists all phonics steps with examples on how to teach phonics to kids.
Children must be taught the letters and the sounds they represent. This can be done using alphabet flashcards.
Once the child has mastered letter sounds, the vowels and consonants sounds can be introduced. Out of 26 letters in English alphabet, 5 are vowels and 21 are consonants.
Short vowels sounds are important to be introduced early as it is common in cvc words that are easy for kids to learn.Short vowels sounds are like in the following
a as in apple
e as in pen
i as in sit
o as in dog
u as in hut.
A cvc word is a three letter word with a consonant at the beginning, a short vowel sound in the middle and a consonant at the end.Once the child could associate letters with their sounds, we can teach them the concept of blending that is joining together the individual sounds of the letters to make words.
Word family is a set of words having similar patterns like same ending.Word families help kids build strong reading fluency.
Eg. -ad family – bad, dad, mad, lad, pad, sad
When two or more consonants are together and they each make their own sound, that is called a consonant blend.Consonant blends can come in the beginning or end of a word.
Eg. consonant blend st comes in beginning in the word ‘step’ and the end in the word ‘last’.
A digraph is two letters combined to make on a unique single sound.
e.g.
ch as in chair
sh as in shop
th as in thin
wh as in what
ph as in phone
ck as in sock
A trigraph is a single sound represented by three letters.
e.g.
igh as in sight
ear as in hear
Diphthongs are the combination of two different vowel sounds that together make a distinct new sound.Diphthongs are also called gliding vowels because the sound glides from one vowel sound to another.
e.g.
oi as in coin
oy as in toy
A long vowel is a vowel sound that is pronounced the same as its name.
e.g.
‘a’ in ‘baby’ is long vowel sound.
‘e’ in ’emu’ is long vowel sound.
‘I’ in ‘bike’ is long vowel sound.
‘o’ in boat is long vowel sound.
‘u’ in ‘cube’ is long vowel sound.
Magic ‘e’ rule : When ‘e’ is at the end of the word, it is usually silent and tells the other vowel in the word to say its name(long sound).
mad(‘a’ short ) – made( e at the end makes ‘a’ long sound)
pin -pine
hop- hope
cut – cute
When a vowel is followed by r , the r changes the sound the vowel makes.The vowel is now called an r controlled vowel.The r here is called ‘ bossy r ‘ as it takes over and makes the vowel sound in a new way unlike the short or long sound of that vowel.For eg, you can see how r changes the sound ‘a’ in ‘car’ totally different from ‘a’ sound in cat or came.
There are 2 different sounds for the consonants ‘g’ and ‘c’ depending on the vowel that follows them : hard and soft.
Hard c sound : cup, car
Soft c sound : circle , city
Hard g sound : gum, goat
Soft g sound : gem, gym
The rule is when c or g is followed by e, i, y, the sound is soft.
when c or g is followed by a, o, u , the sound is hard.
Sight words are words that are recognized by sight and not sounded out.Sight words help kids to read faster and fluently.Sight words do not follow spelling rules.Children are taught to identify sight words at a glance through repetition and practice.
e.g come, once, the