INSTRUCTION
Kayla Burdette
What is Phonics?
◦ Phonics refers to the relationship between letters and their sounds.
◦ Phonics is important because it helps teach children how to read and spell.
◦ Sounded out – students use each sound in the word to decode the word
◦ Read by analogy – students notice that a word looks like another word
◦ Recognized – students know the word as soon as they see it (mostly sight words)
Stages in Reading Words
◦ Pre-alphabetic Stage
◦ Students use non phonemic features of words to distinguish it from other words
◦ Phonics should be taught in small group settings to ensure that all students get exactly
what they need
Phonics Elements
◦ Consonants
◦ There are 25 consonant sounds (including digraphs)
◦ Blends – clusters of letters made up of two or three letters
◦ Vowels
◦ There are about 16 vowel sounds
◦ Each vowel has several sounds – long, short, or other vowel teams (such as ai)
◦ Each vowel has two to four sounds
◦ Onsets and Rimes
◦ An onset is the consonant(s) before the rime
◦ A rime is the vowel sound and any other consonants that follow the vowel
Approaches to Teaching Phonics
◦ Analytic – consonants are not taught in isolation because their sounds could be
distorted (schwa sound may be added)
◦ Whole-to-Part
◦ Teacher presents the skill before teaching the skill through shared reading
◦ Embedded or Systematic
◦ systematic – phonics is taught in a logical sequence
◦ Embedded - phonics is taught as needed
Teaching Consonants
◦ Initial consonants should be taught first
◦ Letter-sound relationships should be taught directly
◦ Books can be used to teach insatiable consonants
◦ Word sorts can also reinforce student understanding of letter-sound relationships
◦ Final Consonants
◦ Taught the some way as initial consonants, but teach that they go at the end of a
word
◦ Can be taught while working with word families (-at)
◦ Consonant Blends
◦ Teachers should begin by teaching s blends because they are easier to hear
◦ Blends can be difficult for students to segment and may need more work with
phonemic awareness
Teaching Vowels
◦ Word-building approach
◦ Vowels can be taught using rimes and word parts (-ag, -et, it)
◦ After being presented as a whole, rimes can be broken down into their individual sounds
◦ Teaching paterns
◦ Vowels occur in consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), consonant-vowel (CV), final e (long vowel
sound), and vowel digraph (long vowel sound usually)
Vowels Patterns
◦ The CVC pattern is the easiest to teach and s usually taught first
◦ Most of the words in a decodable reader can be sounded out, but there are also
known sight words in the text
◦ Teachers must know the similarities and differences between the student’s mother
language and English
◦ Teachers needs to understand that not all sounds in a student’s native language are
present in English and vise versa
◦ Just like in English, books should be chosen based on the skills that are being taught
References
◦ Gunning, T. G. (2016). Creating literacy instruction for all students. Ninth Edition. Pearson
Merrill Prentice Hall.
◦ http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/reading-language/reading-tips/phonics-
basics/