What is Phonics
Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes and graphemes.
What is phonemes and graphemes?
Phonemes
Phonemes are spoken sounds in the English language, English has around 44 phonemes. For example, the word "cat" has three phonemes: /k/, /æ/, and /t/.
Graphemes
Graphemes are written symbols that represent those sounds. A grapheme can be a single letter (like "t") or a combination of letters (like "igh" in "high").
Crucial to know
A single phoneme can be represented by multiple graphemes (e.g., the /s/ sound can be represented by "s" in "sit", "ss" in "dress", or "c" in "city").
A single grapheme can represent multiple phonemes (e.g., the letter "a" can be pronounced as /æ/ in "cat", /ɑː/ in "car", or /eɪ/ in "cake").
Practice regularly
At the beginning students will require multiple exposures to letters and their corresponding names and sounds before they become rapidly and automatically recalled. Students who have difficulty with phonological processing will need careful monitoring because they will take longer to develop this knowledge.
All beginning readers need to know how to produce speech sounds (phonemes) in isolation, and how to pronounce these phonemes correctly. It is important for teachers to carefully articulate the phonemes of speech in order to facilitate the critical phonemic awareness skills of blending and segmenting.
Conclusion
=>Provide multiple exposures
=>Use multisensory methods of learning (tracing and writing letters while saying their phonemes)
=>Teach small set of letters at a time
=>Teach letter sounds in a developmentally appropriate manner
=>Point out visual features of letters
=>Teach letter sounds using embedded mnemonic letters
