What is phonics | A step by step guide to teach phonics

Phonics Introduction

Phonics is a method of teaching children how to read and write on their own. It makes reading and writing easier. Phonics is nothing but teaching the children to read or spell the word through the sounds of the letter. English has 1 alphabet and that alphabet contains 26 letters. These 26 letters in the English alphabet make 42 sounds. The way of reading a letter or word through the sound of that letter is known as phonics.

Phonemes - In English, the name of the letter and the sound of the letter are different. So it creates difficulty for children to read a word or a sentence. To make it easier, phonics was introduced. Phonemes mean a small unit of sound. The sound of a letter is called a phoneme.

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LETTERS SOUNDS - PHONICS

Types of Phonics

There are four types of phonics. They are

Synthetic phonics
Analytic phonics
Embedded phonics
Analogy phonics

Synthetic phonics

It begins with teaching sounds of the alphabet and then continues to teach the whole world. It is a widely used approach and it begins with introducing all the 42 sounds first and later the blending of the sounds into a word. The reading and spelling are taught simultaneously. It is systematic and follows blending and segmentation.

Analytic phonics

It is a different approach compared to that of synthetic phonics. It starts with a whole word and then analyzes it. It doesn't involve teaching the sounds of an alphabet and the blending of letters. Instead, it begins with a full word.

Embedded phonics

This embedded phonics is similar to analytic phonics. It begins with teaching the stories and emphasizes phonics only when it is necessary. This method focuses less on phonics instead it emphasis more on reading first. It is not a structured approach and the limited number of letters and sound relationships are taught while reading.

Analogy phonics

It is the least used approach. The analogy phonics begins with teaching through analogy. The children learn a new word by identifying the similarities between words. The keywords in this approach are onsets and rimes. The onset is the beginning of a word and the rimes are the last parts of a word.

Example: SAT: S-AT (S is the onset and AT is the rimes)

This approach requires memorization of the onsets, rimes, and word patterns. So it is the least used approach among other phonics methodology.

Jolly Phonics and Montessori method

There are two methodologies to teach phonics for children. They are as follows

Jolly Phonics
Montessori method

Jolly Phonics

Jolly Phonics is a commonly used method to teach phonics for children. The jolly phonics method follows the synthetic phonics approach. This method is a fun way of teaching and the children love to learn phonics through this method. The alphabets are introduced in a specific set of order in jolly phonics. The letter sounds are divided into seven groups.

Step 1 - Introduction to letter sounds

Groups	Specific order of alphabet
🔹️ Group 1 🔹️ Group 2 🔹️ Group 3 🔹️ Group 4 🔹️ Group 5 🔹️ Group 6 🔹️ Group 7	🔹️ s, a, t, i, p, n 🔹️ ck, e, h, r, m, d 🔹️ g, o, u, l, f, b 🔹️ ai, j, oa, ie, ee, or 🔹️ z, w, ng, v, oo, oo 🔹️ y, x, ch, sh, th, th 🔹️ qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar

You can introduce the sounds of the letter in the above order. There are 24 single letter sounds and 18 digraphs(which is two letter sound such as ck, oa, ai)

In the above table, group 5 has oo and oo and group 6 has th and th. The oo, oo are two different sounds, and the th, th are the two different sounds.

For example 1:

oo	oo
🔹️ book 🔹️ good 🔹️ stood	🔹️ zoo 🔹️ moon 🔹️ soon

For example 2:

th	th
🔹️ that 🔹️ this 🔹️ smooth	🔹️ thin 🔹️ teeth 🔹️ cloth

Step 2 - Blending (CVC words)

When a group of two or three consonants in words forms a unique consonant sound. The first step to teach English phonics is the introduction of letter sounds. The next step is CVC blends. The CVC means Consonant Vowel Consonant. For example:

CVC words are mat, pot, bin, big, mom, and so on.

In the word 'mat' - m is a consonant, a is a vowel, t is a consonant. Here the letters 'a' and 't' are blended together and then the letter m is joined with it. Here they are segmenting and blending the sounds.

Read on: Learn more about sight words, CVC words, blends, digraphs

Step 3 - Digraph

when two letters are combined together it forms one sound is known as a digraph. It can be made up of consonants or vowels. The consonants digraph combines two constants that represent a single sound. For example:

ch - chat

ng - long

ck - cat ( c sounds as ka)

when at least one of the two letters combination is vowel then it is the vowel digraph. For example

or ( o is vowel and r is consonant) or - for, born, snort.

The split digraph is that the vowels are split by a constant. The digraphs such as ee, oa, ae, ie, ue are split by a consonant. Example: love, care, kite.

When 3 letters are combined together to represent one sound is known as trigraph.

Final Note

This article helps you to teach phonics to your children in a step-by-step method. You can always with an introduction to letter sounds, blending, segmenting, digraphs, diphthongs, magic e, long vowel sound, short vowel sound, and sentence formation. In the next post, you will know about phonics in depth. 'Momovators' is always and forever to assist you in education, parenting, and fitness. In case you have queries on the above topic, please comment below.