Anyone who can read and write in an alphabetical language has mastered an important set of skills. They know the connection between letters and the sounds each one represents. They can decipher letter and word combinations when reading and encode which sequence of letters to spell when writing. Understanding these letter-to-sound principles is one of the most important aspects of literacy; a precious ability of human communication.
If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’ve already mastered these skills in English. You likely learned them through phonics instruction, although you may not remember how.
If you’re an educator or parent who’s helping a child learn to read, you might find yourself wondering: what is phonics? And how should I be teaching it?
In this guide, we’ll refresh your memory and explore what phonics instruction is meant to be.
Phonics and the Reading Pyramid
Phonics is one of the foundational pillars of the reading pyramid. Once children understand the sounds of their language and how to verbally manipulate words (phonemic awareness), they can gradually move up the pyramid.
With continued instruction, they move up the pyramid to build fluency—the ability to read with ease, accuracy, and expression. As they grow in fluency, children build their vocabulary. Eventually, they develop all the essential reading skills and can experience reading comprehension with little adult guidance.
How Phonics Works
Phonics instruction builds knowledge about letter-sound correlations in reading and writing. It is simply, “the relationship between speech and print” (Beck, 2006, p.16). It is an umbrella term for several important skills children acquire through development and instruction.
Learning the Sounds of Language
Phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear, recognize, and manipulate the different sounds in language, develops in a child’s early years of life. It sets the foundation for spoken language.
The more that children develop and engage in literacy activities with family members, they develop pre-reading skills. They learn things like concepts of print, rhyming, several alphabetical letters, and more. Soon, they’ll be ready for phonics instruction to begin.
The Alphabetic Principle
Before kindergarten, children typically start learning the alphabetic principle. This is the understanding that words are made of letters. It’s the concept and practice of connecting letters with their corresponding sounds (otherwise known as a “grapheme-phoneme correspondence” or GPC). Children often learn the alphabet song and know that the letters make certain sounds, like the letter <m> representing the sound /m/. With early phonics instruction, they gradually learn, for example, that the letters <ch> make the /ch/ sound as in ‘chocolate’ and /th/ is the beginning sound of the word, “thanks.”
Blending Letter Sounds to Form Words (Decoding)
The more grapheme-phoneme correspondences a child knows, the more they can practice blending. Phoneme blending is combining individual letter sounds in a word to read the whole word. This can also be called sounding out or decoding. During instruction, a child might come across a new word. The child can blend the sounds such as /m/ /a/ /t/ to read the whole word, ‘mat’.
Segmenting Words into Letters (Spelling/Encoding)
Inversely, children learn segmenting in phonics instruction, which is the opposite of blending. Kids learn early spelling techniques when they can spell their names, loved ones’ names, and simple words based on the individual sounds that make up a word. For example, if a child wants to spell ‘skip’ but doesn’t know how, they can gradually segment the word into its individual phonemes from start to finish: /s/ /k/ /i/ /p/.
Types of Phonics Instruction and Their Efficacy
There are four different types of phonics. Any phonics instruction for early readers is better than no phonics instruction at all. However, some methods do have more efficacious results than others.
Regardless of the approach in the type of phonics, instruction should be explicit and systematic. This means determining a pre-established sequence or “scope and sequence” to directly teach phonics concepts. In this way, children can start learning with easier concepts and slowly increase complexity in different stages.
Synthetic Phonics
Synthetic phonics teaches the association of individual language sounds (phonemes) to alphabetical letters (graphemes). Then, learners are explicitly taught to “sound out” each letter and then blend the sounds to form the whole word. For example: the letter sounds /s/ /a/ /t/ are blended to decode the word ‘sat’.
There is research-based evidence that synthetic phonics is the most efficacious type of phonics to use when teaching children to learn to read. Moore (2021) says, “It is sensible to employ an approach that makes the systematic instruction and revision of sound-spelling correspondences most comprehensible for both teachers and students. Synthetic phonics offers the simplest way to achieve this” (p. 24).
Analogy Phonics
Analogy phonics is a top-down approach. This means the instruction starts with whole words instead of individual sounds. In analogy phonics, common “word families” or “rimes” are used to
learn words instead of blending individual letter sounds. It starts with a word a child already knows (sat), breaks them down into the onset and rime (s-at, c-at), and then introduces similar words in that pattern (mat, fat, rat, pat, etc.).
Analytic Phonics
Also known as implicit phonics, analytic phonics teaches kids to process a new word by “analyzing” its parts (phonograms) and relating them to previously learned words. For example, a child may know the words cat, sad, ran, and mat. When presented with the new word, rat, they must sift through what they know— c/at/ + m/at/ + /r/an— to conclude /r/ + –at is ‘rat’.
An analytic phonics approach may not be effective for all children. Typically children perform better on reading and spelling with a synthetic phonics approach.
Embedded Phonics
The embedded, or incidental, phonics method provides reading instruction using whole texts. It is based on a theory of reading instruction called “whole language.” Instead of teaching explicit, systematic phonics skills, it requires opportunistic learning through practices like sight words (the, it, and, was, etc.) and context clues (words, letters, or pictures that hint at meanings or other words in the sentence).
Embedded phonics practices are often considered “real world” reading but can hinder a child’s decoding skills, which are essential for reading new words. Relying on context clues is considered a bad habit as it can stunt overall literacy development.
Phonics, Explained Simple Enough for a Child to Understand
Reading is like a fun treasure hunt. You can explore all sorts of stories and ideas to find the golden nuggets you’re looking for, and sometimes, discover amazing prizes you never imagined. This treasure hunt happens in the world of words, where endless adventures of learning and imagination live.
But when children first enter the world of words, they don’t know where to go. Everything looks squiggly and confusing because this world is made of secret codes. These secret codes are letters of the alphabet.
The first adventure is to learn to crack the code, which is what phonics teaches. Every letter makes a special sound; many of them you already know how to speak. Every time you learn a new letter and the sounds it makes, you crack another piece of the code.
As you learn more of these letters and their sounds, you’ll be able to decode words. Soon, the world of words will come to life and you’ll collect many treasures as you explore. With practice, you can enjoy new and exciting treasure hunts for life.
Resources to Help a Child Learn Phonics
There are countless phonics programs available today. But like the different phonics instruction methods, not all programs are the same or offer the best results.
To help you decide which phonics programs might help your child learn, phonics.org offers:
- Educational articles and guides: Gain a deeper understanding of phonics principles, teaching strategies, and best practices.
- Phonics program reviews: Compare expert-reviewed assessments of popular phonics curricula to help you make an informed decision.
- Fun phonics activities and games: Browse the top resources that make learning phonics fun and interactive.
Whether you’re teaching your child at home or a group of students in a classroom, there are affordable, effective phonics programs to help their learning process. Explore the resources at phonics.org to find the right one!
Have a phonics program or app you’d like us to review? Reach out to us at [email protected] to let us know.
