Phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching others how to read by correlating sounds with letters.  It can also be used to correlate sounds with groups of letters in a alphabetic writing system.

It is a connection between graphemes (letter symbols) and sounds.

Elements of Phonics in a classroom:

Helps the students achieve word identification. The goal is to help the students quickly determine the sounds in unfamiliar written words.

How Phonics can be incorporated in Reading:

Synthetic Phonics: builds words from the ground up. The readers can connect the letters with their corresponding phonemes.  The reader can then blend those together to create the word. Another approach is the analytic approach.  The analytic approach teaches sounds as part of the words.

Phonics has become an important impact on reading in schools.  Students are now receiving phonics instruction in grades kindergarten through first. Having phonics instruction start at those grade levels has significantly increased the students’ comprehension of reading and spelling.  For the upper grade levels phonic instruction has become a big impact for students who are diverse learners.  Students’ who have an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) have received improvement by using phonic instruction.