PHONICS

What is phonics?

Phonics is a method of teaching beginning readers to read and pronounce words by learning to associate letters or letter groups with the sounds they represent. A student must be able to blend the sounds of these symbols back into a word. Only knowing the sounds without the ability to put them together would just be grunts and groans. Reading is the blending of these sounds smoothly together to produce the sounds within a word.

Identification of sounds and symbols
• Do you know the letters by sight and by sound?
• Can you match letters with the appropriate sounds and sounds with the right letters?

There are rules to our English language that many of us never learned. But this information is vital to a person who is struggling with reading and spelling.

For example

• Which letters are vowels?
• Which letters are consonants?
• Which letters are part-time vowels?
• Which letters can be combined to form new sounds like sh, ar, ow, tion?
• When do you use ay instead of ai?
• Why does the letter i sound like a short i in ‘fish’ and long i in ‘item’?

Instruction in systematic phonics produces significant benefits for students in K-6th grade — and for anyone having difficulty learning to read.