What is phonics?

✅ What is phonics?

📕Phonics is the study of the relationship between the spoken and written language. Each letter or combination of letters represent a sound or sounds.

📘as we must be able to recognise which symbols make which sounds in order to read.

📕The Alphabetic Codeprovides us with this information.

📘 Words which don’t follow easily recognisable patterns are called ‘tricky words’.
We have to learn these words in their entirety.

📕The Alphabetic Code is an integral part of the language and every English teacher needs to be aware of the information contained within it. In fact, learning how the different phonemes are represented will help non-native teachers improve their pronunciation. Non-native teachers will be able to share their experiences of learning the code and will know what areas will cause their students special problems.

📘The best advice I can give is to jump in where you are – and learn as you go along.

✅Code and try some of the activities below. You will soon get the hang of it.

📕What about tricky words?

📘Once you’ve studied the Alphabetic Code and the alternative spellings, you’ll see that some words fall outside of the code. Native speakers learn a lot of these at school through poetry, so one way to teach them is to say a word that rhymes with the tricky word ؛ for example, shoe rhymes with zoo and key rhymes with tree:

📕Phonics is taught in phases:

✅ Phase 1 phonics concentrates on teaching the sounds of the language.

✅Phase 2 phonics attaches a letter or letters to each sound “called a letter sound. Children learn to blend letter sounds to make simple decodable words ;for example, cat, pen, sun.
At this stage children need to learn some high frequency tricky words so that they can read simple sentences (example the, I, me.
• Phase 3 and 4 phonics present digraphs and trigraphs: sounds which are represented by more than one letter : for example the ai in rain, the alternative spelling a_e in cake, called a split digraph, and the trigraph igh in light.

✅Phases 5 and 6 continue to present and practise alternative spellings and less frequent tricky words, as well as other aspects of the written language.