The teaching of phonics is a daily part of the school timetable for the majority of 4-7 year olds in England, and many primary schools continue to use a phonics approach with older age groups (some secondary school pupils benefit from phonics teaching too).
Children are taught to:
1. recognise (and correctly form) written letter symbols and match them to clean, clearly spoken sounds;
2. work from left-to-right, breaking words into sounds (sounding out or segmenting)…
3. then begin to read the words, by putting the letter sounds together in order (blending);
4. identify combinations of letters which make one sound (e.g. 'ee' in 'tree', 'sh' in 'shop', 'ar' in 'park').
Children are taught to:
1. recognise (and correctly form) written letter symbols and match them to clean, clearly spoken sounds;
2. work from left-to-right, breaking words into sounds (sounding out or segmenting)…
3. then begin to read the words, by putting the letter sounds together in order (blending);
4. identify combinations of letters which make one sound (e.g. 'ee' in 'tree', 'sh' in 'shop', 'ar' in 'park').
Some schools also teach children the technical terms* for letters working together:
The alphabetic code: There are believed to be approximately 44 sounds in the English language, represented by a variety of single and grouped letter symbols. Click on the link below to watch Spelfabet's YouTube video: |
Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP):
To stop things getting too complicated, a straightforward system needs to be used when teaching phonics. Simple letter/sound matches are introduced first, then new letters/sounds are added when the children are ready. Over time, SSP equips children to become confident in matching a steadily increasing number of letters and sounds.
Good phonics teaching helps to provide an excellent foundation for future readers and writers.
* More technical terms:
grapheme: a written symbol
phoneme: a spoken sound
grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs): letter-sound matches
To stop things getting too complicated, a straightforward system needs to be used when teaching phonics. Simple letter/sound matches are introduced first, then new letters/sounds are added when the children are ready. Over time, SSP equips children to become confident in matching a steadily increasing number of letters and sounds.
Good phonics teaching helps to provide an excellent foundation for future readers and writers.
* More technical terms:
grapheme: a written symbol
phoneme: a spoken sound
grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs): letter-sound matches