Phonics



    Phonics is the relationship between sounds and letters and is used for word identification and spelling in reading and writing. It is critical to the identification of unfamiliar words later on when learning to read and write.  The alphabetic principle is the idea that letters in words usually stand for specific sounds. (Hill 2006, pg208) The sounds can be created by single letters or combinations of letters, for example ‘duck’ has four letters but three sounds d/u/ck. Many teachers use a problem-solving approach to phonics where the sounds to letter combinations are taught. This short video is an example of this technique for the letters A to E. media type="youtube" key="tWcSXJss5ig&hl=en" height="355" width="425" 

The understanding of phonics progresses through the following stages (Hill 2006 pg212-223):
 * Stage one**: __Letter of the alphabet__, a child can recognise, say and write the names and the common sounds of the lower case and upper case letters of the alphabet. Eg, The child can identify the letter ‘d’ along with its /d/ sound from the word //dog//.


 * Stage two**: __Onset and rimes or word families__, the child recognises onset and rimes and word families which are letter pairs of vowel and consonant and three letter words in a consonant - vowel- consonant order eg, c-a-t or d-o-g.


 * Stage three**: __Blends__, this stage has three phases. First, a two letter initial consonant blend such as bl, br and sc. Second, a two letter final consonant blends like ft, ng and st. Third, a three letter initial consonant blend like scr, spr and str. For an example of this stage view the video on the home page of this website by clicking here.


 * Stage four**: __Digraphs and other letter combinations__, this stage has four phases. First, consonant digraphs, eg ck, sh and th. Second, vowel digraphs, which include ai, ee and ea. Third, are sounds from the following letter, ow, ou, oy, oi, au and aw. Fourth, are all other letter combination eg air, ear and er.

 There are many different ways to teach phonics and games are a great way to reinforce phonics and the more confident the child becomes with phonics the easier the transition to reading and writing will be.
 * Stage five**: __Structural analysis__ is syllabification, including compound words, prefixes, suffixes and base words.

 This is a fantastic website for phonic posters that are printer friendly for the classroom. __ http://www.adrianbruce.com/reading/posters/index.htm media type="custom" key="702633" __  For fantastic educational online games visit [|http://www.starfall.com] style="FONT-SIZE: 120%">
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