When it comes to learning a second language, we find it very difficult to teach our children as English and French are both inherently very different languages both spoken wise and logically as well. It is because of this difference that a lot of experimentation in teaching and learning keeps on happening. Phonics is one such attempt of teaching English as a language to children. The major highlight of this approach is its focus on the sounds of each alphabets rather than the method in our age where we were introduced to letter names and were expected to start making words out of it directly from there.
History
Now you would think that history of phonics would be very simple, somebody might have come up with this approach, shared it and it got its place. Well, it’s more interesting than this. Phonics was a part of a major debates back in the 1920’s where it was put against the “Whole word learning” approach. It was a huge debate with the whole educational community split into two where they started connecting each other’s motives to political agendas and hence making this a ground for political debates as well. You can read the details here.
Why
Imagine building a wall and putting all the bricks together, it would be more of a pile with no meaning or use. It’s the same with letters and sounds, just throwing in a couple of words together doesn’t make a meaningful word, you need to put them in a way they are readable and convey a meaning. This is where phonics comes to our rescue. With the knowledge of the sounds of alphabet, it is easier for us to make a word. For example: If a child who is aware of phonics is asked to spell “run”, it would not be difficult for the child break the word into sounds, connect sounds to the alphabets and spell the word while if a child doesn’t know the sounds, it will be a little difficult. The whole purpose of phonics is to equip the child with the skills to form most of the words independent of rote memorization rather be able to spell words they have never even read in their lives.
Elements of Phonics
There are 2 elements of phonics:
Phoneme: A phoneme is the smallest sound unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinct meaning. There are approximately 44 sounds. Phonemes are customarily written between slashes, thus /b/ and /p/. For example: When we say sun, the phonemes used are /s/ /u/ /n/
Grapheme: A grapheme is a written symbol (a single letter or a sequence of letters) that represents a sound (phoneme). Some examples are as ai, sh, igh, tch etc. So when children say the sound /s/ this is a phoneme, but when they write the letter ‘s’ this is a grapheme.
Phonogram: A phonogram is a grapheme which represents a phoneme or combination of phonemes. For example, “igh” is an English-language phonogram that represents the hard “I” sound in “high”.
Difference between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognise phonemes or graphemes (sounds) in spoken words and so it is an oral skill and not a written skill.
Phonics is the relationship between sounds and spellings. (phonemes and graphemes)
Understanding Phonics
Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words. In phonics lessons children are taught three main things:
GPCs
Blending
Segmenting
GPC
This stands for grapheme phoneme correspondences. This simply means that they are taught all the phonemes (sounds) in the English language and ways of writing them down. These sounds are taught in a particular order. The first sounds to be taught are s, a, t, p, i, n.
Blending
Children are taught to be able to blend. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are able to merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This skill is vital in learning to read.
c-a-t = cat
Segmenting
Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words.
cat = c-a-t
Glossary of Terms
CVC words: Words that consist of a consonant-vowel-consonant as in c-a-t and b-i-g.
Digraphs and trigraphs: A digraph is a two letter grapheme that represents one sound as ‘sh’ in ship. A trigraph is a three letter grapheme where they represent one phoneme such as ‘igh’ in night.
Consonant digraph: A phoneme that is made up of two graphemes, the first of which is a consonant as in ‘wh’ and ‘ng’.
Adjacent consonants: Two or more consonants next to each other in a word – stop list – CAN PROVE TRICKY
Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in a word.
Phonics: Consists of the knowledge of the skills of segmenting and blending, knowledge of the alphabetic code and an understanding of the principles underpinning the way the code is used in reading and spelling.
Split digraphs: A split digraph has a letter that splits, i.e. comes between, the two letters in the digraph. For example, ‘make’, where ‘k’ splits the digraph ‘ae’ which represents the phoneme /ai/
Vowel digraph: A phoneme that is made up of two graphemes, the first of which is a vowel as in ‘ai’ and ‘oy’.
Phonic Phases
Letters and sounds splits phonics teaching up into 6 distinct phases.
Phases 1 – 6
Taught daily, a session of approx 15-20 mins. Children are taught mainly through games, songs and actions.
Phase 1
Phonics starts in Phase 2. Phase 1 prepares children for Phase 2, and has activities designed to develop children’s oral blending and segmenting of the sounds in spoken words, as well as speaking and listening skills. It is made clear in Letters and Sounds: Notes of Guidance that children do not need to complete all seven aspects of the Phase 1 programme before starting Phase 2, and indeed Phase 1 work can run alongside Phase 2 work.
Phase 1 is absolutely vital. It is the one phase that shouldn’t come to an end. These skills should continue to be developed throughout KS1 and KS2. Phase 1 develops childrens abilities to listen to, make, explore and talk about sounds. This phase starts in nursery and continues throughout all phases 2-6. The activities are designed to get children to listen and to discriminate between sounds. The activities are arranged under seven aspects.
General sound discrimination – environmental sounds.
General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds.
General sound discrimination – body percussion.
Rhythm and rhyme.
Alliteration.
Voice sounds.
Oral blending and segmenting.
Phase 2
Duration = 6 weeks (approx)
The key idea here is that children understand that blending and segmenting are reversible processes. Using sounding and blending for reading, and segmenting for spelling, children soon read and spell simple VC and CVC words, such as ‘at’, ‘sat’ and ‘pat’. The children read and spell more and more new words as each letter sound is taught.
GPCs need to be introduced in systematic way.
Set 1 – s a t p
Set 2 – i n m d
Set 3 – g o c k
Set 4 – ck e u r
Set 5 – h b f ff l ll s ss
It is very important that you pronounce these phonemes clearly and correctly. If you don’t, children may find it very difficult to blend them together.
When introducing GPCs, ensure you introduce them with the sounds, pictures, actions and lots of practise for forming the letter. You can form the letter with a finger in the air, on the palm of the hand, on the back of another child, on a rough surface like the floor. All these experiences will need to come before trying to write the letter on a whiteboard or piece of paper.
Phase 3
Duration = 12 weeks (approx)
A major difference from Phase 2 is that the children now learn that some sounds in our language are spelt by more than one letter, e.g. the consonant digraph ‘sh’ as in ‘shop’, the vowel digraph ‘oa’ as in ‘boat’.
Graphemes: ear (hear), air (fair), ure (pure), er (hammer), ar (car), or (torn), ur (turn), ow (cow), oi (coin), ai (train), ee (sheep), igh (night), oa (boat), oo (boot/look)
Phase 3 continues in the same way as Phase 2 and introduces more new GPCs. By the end of Phase 3 the children will know one way of writing down each of the 44 phonemes.
Set 6 – j v w x
Set 7 – y z zz qu
Consonant digraphs – ch sh th ng
Vowel digraphs (and trigraphs) ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er
Make sure that you are very confident about what the term CVC means. It refers to words with a consonant phoneme, a vowel phoneme and then a consonant phoneme – it is not referring to letters. Therefore hot, bed, boat and ship are all CVC words, but cow and toy are not.
Phase 4
Duration = 4 – 6 weeks (approx)
The main challenge in this phase is to help children to blend and segment words with adjacent consonants e.g. truck, help. These adjacent consonant phonemes can both be heard when you say the word which makes them different from a digraph where there are two letters that make just one sound. Be careful, lots of people get these confused, including some published materials.
Children with speech and language difficulties can find Phase 4 very tricky. If children struggle to hear all the sounds in a word encourage them to think about the movements that their mouths are making. Looking in mirrors can help with this.
Phase 5a (Weeks 1 – 4)
These 4 weeks introduce some new GPCs in the same way as in previous phases. Five of these GPCs are known as split digraphs. They are a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e. These used to be taught as magic e but now it is recommended that children learn to recognise these in the same way as other graphemes but simply explaining that in these particular graphemes the two letters work as a team, but they aren’t directly next to each other.
Phase 5b (Weeks 4 – 7)
These 3 weeks introduce the idea that some graphemes can be pronounced in more than one way. E.g. the ch grapheme can be pronounced in each of these ways check, chef and school. This is a vital lesson for children to learn and they need to learn to apply it in their reading. Make sure you model trying to read a word by sounding out the most obvious phonemes then blending it together. If it doesn’t make sense model looking at each grapheme and seeing whether there are alternative pronunciations. Try sounding out the word with the alternative pronunciation and blending it together. Does it make sense now? This can be quite a jump for some children to make as they have to realise that English isn’t quite as straightforward as it once seemed. However, it can also be quite empowering to know that just because a word doesn’t make sense first time, it doesn’t mean that they can’t go back and figure it out for themselves.
Phase 5c (Weeks 8 – 30)
This part of Phase 5 is all about learning that some phonemes have more than one spelling (in fact some of the really awkward ones have loads of different spellings). In the past, some people have thrown in the towel with phonics at this point and decided that there is no point in teaching it as there is no rhyme and reason to how these phonemes are spelled. The fact is that there is much more rhyme and reason to which spelling we use for these phonemes then most people are aware of. Certainly, we can teach children how to make the best guesses when spelling these phonemes. They aren’t always infallible, but it leaves children with far fewer ‘tricky’ spellings that they have to just learn in other ways. It is important that children try to discover these rules by themselves by playing investigative type games and looking for patterns.
Phase 6
Phase 6 reinforces much of the learning from Phase 5, helps children to develop greater automaticity in reading, and begins to explore spelling rules and conventions e.g. adding -ing and -ed.
How does phonics fit into the big picture of teaching reading?
Phonics is simply the code that turns written language into spoken language and vice versa. It is the vital initial step in teaching children to read but it is far from the whole picture. Phonics will only work in an environment where Speaking and Listening Skills are promoted and developed. Children should also be regularly exposed to a wide range of quality texts. They should be regularly read aloud to. Regular, well planned Guided Reading sessions are essential and reading skills should also be explicitly taught in Shared Reading sessions within literacy lessons.
Once children reach Phase 6, we work on helping them to move away from blending and segmenting and develop automaticity in their reading. We can then devote even more of our attentions to developing all the other areas of reading that need to teach.
History
Now you would think that history of phonics would be very simple, somebody might have come up with this approach, shared it and it got its place. Well, it’s more interesting than this. Phonics was a part of a major debates back in the 1920’s where it was put against the “Whole word learning” approach. It was a huge debate with the whole educational community split into two where they started connecting each other’s motives to political agendas and hence making this a ground for political debates as well. You can read the details here.
Why
Imagine building a wall and putting all the bricks together, it would be more of a pile with no meaning or use. It’s the same with letters and sounds, just throwing in a couple of words together doesn’t make a meaningful word, you need to put them in a way they are readable and convey a meaning. This is where phonics comes to our rescue. With the knowledge of the sounds of alphabet, it is easier for us to make a word. For example: If a child who is aware of phonics is asked to spell “run”, it would not be difficult for the child break the word into sounds, connect sounds to the alphabets and spell the word while if a child doesn’t know the sounds, it will be a little difficult. The whole purpose of phonics is to equip the child with the skills to form most of the words independent of rote memorization rather be able to spell words they have never even read in their lives.
Elements of Phonics
There are 2 elements of phonics:
Phoneme: A phoneme is the smallest sound unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinct meaning. There are approximately 44 sounds. Phonemes are customarily written between slashes, thus /b/ and /p/. For example: When we say sun, the phonemes used are /s/ /u/ /n/
Grapheme: A grapheme is a written symbol (a single letter or a sequence of letters) that represents a sound (phoneme). Some examples are as ai, sh, igh, tch etc. So when children say the sound /s/ this is a phoneme, but when they write the letter ‘s’ this is a grapheme.
Phonogram: A phonogram is a grapheme which represents a phoneme or combination of phonemes. For example, “igh” is an English-language phonogram that represents the hard “I” sound in “high”.
Difference between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognise phonemes or graphemes (sounds) in spoken words and so it is an oral skill and not a written skill.
Phonics is the relationship between sounds and spellings. (phonemes and graphemes)
Understanding Phonics
Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words. In phonics lessons children are taught three main things:
GPC
This stands for grapheme phoneme correspondences. This simply means that they are taught all the phonemes (sounds) in the English language and ways of writing them down. These sounds are taught in a particular order. The first sounds to be taught are s, a, t, p, i, n.
Blending
Children are taught to be able to blend. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are able to merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This skill is vital in learning to read.
c-a-t = cat
Segmenting
Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words.
cat = c-a-t
Glossary of Terms
CVC words: Words that consist of a consonant-vowel-consonant as in c-a-t and b-i-g.
Digraphs and trigraphs: A digraph is a two letter grapheme that represents one sound as ‘sh’ in ship. A trigraph is a three letter grapheme where they represent one phoneme such as ‘igh’ in night.
Consonant digraph: A phoneme that is made up of two graphemes, the first of which is a consonant as in ‘wh’ and ‘ng’.
Adjacent consonants: Two or more consonants next to each other in a word – stop list – CAN PROVE TRICKY
Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in a word.
Phonics: Consists of the knowledge of the skills of segmenting and blending, knowledge of the alphabetic code and an understanding of the principles underpinning the way the code is used in reading and spelling.
Split digraphs: A split digraph has a letter that splits, i.e. comes between, the two letters in the digraph. For example, ‘make’, where ‘k’ splits the digraph ‘ae’ which represents the phoneme /ai/
Vowel digraph: A phoneme that is made up of two graphemes, the first of which is a vowel as in ‘ai’ and ‘oy’.
Phonic Phases
Letters and sounds splits phonics teaching up into 6 distinct phases.
Phases 1 – 6
Taught daily, a session of approx 15-20 mins. Children are taught mainly through games, songs and actions.
Phase 1
Phonics starts in Phase 2. Phase 1 prepares children for Phase 2, and has activities designed to develop children’s oral blending and segmenting of the sounds in spoken words, as well as speaking and listening skills. It is made clear in Letters and Sounds: Notes of Guidance that children do not need to complete all seven aspects of the Phase 1 programme before starting Phase 2, and indeed Phase 1 work can run alongside Phase 2 work.
Phase 1 is absolutely vital. It is the one phase that shouldn’t come to an end. These skills should continue to be developed throughout KS1 and KS2. Phase 1 develops childrens abilities to listen to, make, explore and talk about sounds. This phase starts in nursery and continues throughout all phases 2-6. The activities are designed to get children to listen and to discriminate between sounds. The activities are arranged under seven aspects.
Phase 2
Duration = 6 weeks (approx)
The key idea here is that children understand that blending and segmenting are reversible processes. Using sounding and blending for reading, and segmenting for spelling, children soon read and spell simple VC and CVC words, such as ‘at’, ‘sat’ and ‘pat’. The children read and spell more and more new words as each letter sound is taught.
GPCs need to be introduced in systematic way.
Set 1 – s a t p
Set 2 – i n m d
Set 3 – g o c k
Set 4 – ck e u r
Set 5 – h b f ff l ll s ss
It is very important that you pronounce these phonemes clearly and correctly. If you don’t, children may find it very difficult to blend them together.
When introducing GPCs, ensure you introduce them with the sounds, pictures, actions and lots of practise for forming the letter. You can form the letter with a finger in the air, on the palm of the hand, on the back of another child, on a rough surface like the floor. All these experiences will need to come before trying to write the letter on a whiteboard or piece of paper.
Phase 3
Duration = 12 weeks (approx)
A major difference from Phase 2 is that the children now learn that some sounds in our language are spelt by more than one letter, e.g. the consonant digraph ‘sh’ as in ‘shop’, the vowel digraph ‘oa’ as in ‘boat’.
Graphemes: ear (hear), air (fair), ure (pure), er (hammer), ar (car), or (torn), ur (turn), ow (cow), oi (coin), ai (train), ee (sheep), igh (night), oa (boat), oo (boot/look)
Phase 3 continues in the same way as Phase 2 and introduces more new GPCs. By the end of Phase 3 the children will know one way of writing down each of the 44 phonemes.
Set 6 – j v w x
Set 7 – y z zz qu
Consonant digraphs – ch sh th ng
Vowel digraphs (and trigraphs) ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er
Make sure that you are very confident about what the term CVC means. It refers to words with a consonant phoneme, a vowel phoneme and then a consonant phoneme – it is not referring to letters. Therefore hot, bed, boat and ship are all CVC words, but cow and toy are not.
Phase 4
Duration = 4 – 6 weeks (approx)
The main challenge in this phase is to help children to blend and segment words with adjacent consonants e.g. truck, help. These adjacent consonant phonemes can both be heard when you say the word which makes them different from a digraph where there are two letters that make just one sound. Be careful, lots of people get these confused, including some published materials.
Children with speech and language difficulties can find Phase 4 very tricky. If children struggle to hear all the sounds in a word encourage them to think about the movements that their mouths are making. Looking in mirrors can help with this.
Phase 5a (Weeks 1 – 4)
These 4 weeks introduce some new GPCs in the same way as in previous phases. Five of these GPCs are known as split digraphs. They are a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e. These used to be taught as magic e but now it is recommended that children learn to recognise these in the same way as other graphemes but simply explaining that in these particular graphemes the two letters work as a team, but they aren’t directly next to each other.
Phase 5b (Weeks 4 – 7)
These 3 weeks introduce the idea that some graphemes can be pronounced in more than one way. E.g. the ch grapheme can be pronounced in each of these ways check, chef and school. This is a vital lesson for children to learn and they need to learn to apply it in their reading. Make sure you model trying to read a word by sounding out the most obvious phonemes then blending it together. If it doesn’t make sense model looking at each grapheme and seeing whether there are alternative pronunciations. Try sounding out the word with the alternative pronunciation and blending it together. Does it make sense now? This can be quite a jump for some children to make as they have to realise that English isn’t quite as straightforward as it once seemed. However, it can also be quite empowering to know that just because a word doesn’t make sense first time, it doesn’t mean that they can’t go back and figure it out for themselves.
Phase 5c (Weeks 8 – 30)
This part of Phase 5 is all about learning that some phonemes have more than one spelling (in fact some of the really awkward ones have loads of different spellings). In the past, some people have thrown in the towel with phonics at this point and decided that there is no point in teaching it as there is no rhyme and reason to how these phonemes are spelled. The fact is that there is much more rhyme and reason to which spelling we use for these phonemes then most people are aware of. Certainly, we can teach children how to make the best guesses when spelling these phonemes. They aren’t always infallible, but it leaves children with far fewer ‘tricky’ spellings that they have to just learn in other ways. It is important that children try to discover these rules by themselves by playing investigative type games and looking for patterns.
Phase 6
Phase 6 reinforces much of the learning from Phase 5, helps children to develop greater automaticity in reading, and begins to explore spelling rules and conventions e.g. adding -ing and -ed.
How does phonics fit into the big picture of teaching reading?
Phonics is simply the code that turns written language into spoken language and vice versa. It is the vital initial step in teaching children to read but it is far from the whole picture. Phonics will only work in an environment where Speaking and Listening Skills are promoted and developed. Children should also be regularly exposed to a wide range of quality texts. They should be regularly read aloud to. Regular, well planned Guided Reading sessions are essential and reading skills should also be explicitly taught in Shared Reading sessions within literacy lessons.
Once children reach Phase 6, we work on helping them to move away from blending and segmenting and develop automaticity in their reading. We can then devote even more of our attentions to developing all the other areas of reading that need to teach.
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