Teaching+Children+Phonics

=Teaching Children Phonics=

Phonics focuses on the sound - letter relationships used in reading and writing. It includes the childs understanding of the following principals:
 * Phonemes** - the are the speech units help to construct a meaning to the word.
 * Phonemic awareness -** the ability to understand that every word is made up of a sequence of phonemes.
 * Phonological awareness -** the ability of a child to understand the sounds of language as a distinct from its meaning.

The alphabetic principal and letter identification
The alphabetic principal refers to the idea that each letter in a word stands for a specific sound. There are 26 letters in the alphabet that represent about 44 different sounds or phonemes. The relationship between letters and sounds is extremely important when children are beginning to learn to read and write. In a childs first year of reading, their letter knowledge and their ability to discriminate phonemes are the two best predictors of a childs reading achievement.

The Stages of Phonic development
There are 5 different stages which help a child procress from single letter sounds and initial, final and medium positions to working with initial and final blends, diagraphs and more complex vowel combinations.




 * Consonants:** occur at the beginning and end of each word and may also occur during the middle.
 * Onsets and rime:** The onset is the consonant that comes before the vowel. The rime is formed with the vowel and the consonant/s that follow e.g ack, ank, eat, eep, etc. These can be used in games and stories to make children more familiar with word families. If you look at the books written by Dr. Seuss which feature many word families which are repeated through out the stories. These books are generally comical and therefore much loved by children of all ages. The predictable and repetitive sentences are perfect for children to be able to follow and read along with the teacher.


 * Blends:** Blends or letter clusters are when 2 or more letter are combined. Consonant blends are usually sorted into two categories, those that occur at the beginning of a word and those that occur at the end. The maximum number of consonants within a word is three and the third letter always consists of either an 'r' or an 'l'.


 * Diagraphs and other letter combinations:** Diagraphs are when two letters together making a single sound. These are called single phonemes and are represented in both the conconant and vowel combinations. In these combinations neither letter in the pair ordinarily represents the sound on its own.


 * Structual analysis:** This involves making structual changes to a base word. These includes changes such as infectional endings for plural and tense prefixes, suffixes and compund words. Syllables are important for analysing the structure of the word and in each word there is generally as many syllables as vowels. When the word endings being added begin with a vowel such as -able, drop the final 'e' before adding the suffix. As a general rule make sure the consonant diagraphs such as ch, th, and sh are not divided.


 * Contraction:** When two or more words are combined to create in a single word and one or more letters has been omitted and an apostrophe being inserted a contration is formed. This carries the same meaning as the long form of the word however, it still has the same pronounciation e.g it is - it's.


 * Compound words:** when two or more words are combined to create a new word generally with a different meaning.

Suggestions for teaching phonics and other helpful websites.