Phonics

The teaching of **phonics** as a strategy is used in all areas of literacy, teaching children to identify sounds in words and match these sounds (phonemes) with letters and combinations of letters (graphemes). In phonics children are to taught to decode words for spelling and pronunciation by looking at the sounds within words and either segmenting and blending the sounds (synthetic phonics) or looking at patterns of sounds between words (analytic phonics). **Analytical Phonics**: An approach that favours learning whole words first and then looking at segments of the words and patterns between words. Children are taught not to learn each phoneme in isolation, but instead to look at common phonemes within words to recognise letter patterns. Children are taught words in word-sets with similar phonemic patterns. Sets may have the same onset (car, cow, can and cat), the same rime (cat, mat, bat and hat) or the same sound within words (tree, sleep, feet, queen).The above word-sets are for **at,** **c** and **ee** words. The above word-sets are for **at,** **c** and **ee** words.
 * Synthetic and Analytic Phonics**

[[image:mcruniprimarypgce/Screen_shot_2011-10-06_at_17.36.27.png width="320" height="200" link="@http://goanimate.com/movie/0cAcrPJ9waRo/1"]]**Click on Burgs and Cola for some analytic phonics!**
**Synthetic Phonics**: In synthetic phonics, the focus is on learning individual phonemes in isolation and matching these phonemes to their corresponding graphemes. Children learn to pronounce and read by segmenting each word into phonemes, sounding out each phoneme in turn, and blending the phonemes to produce the word. A similar approach is taken for the writing and spelling of words. In the following examples, the words are segmented into their phonemic sounds, as shown by the green partitions. The phonemes are sounded out individually and then blended to create the word. This word was segmented into it’s three phonemes, ‘c’, ‘a’ and ‘t’. This word was segmented into it’s three phonemes, ‘t’, ‘r’ and ‘ee’. Although a digraph, ‘ee’ represents a single phoneme. This word was segmented into it’s three phonemes, ‘n’, ‘igh’ and ‘t’. Although a trigraph, ‘igh’ represents a single phoneme.

//Blending//: Putting sounds together to make a word, for example the sounds “ch”, “o” and “p” are blended to make “chop”. //Digraph//: Two letters that make a sound, for example, “ch” or “th”. //Grapheme//: A group of letters that make one sound, such as “oi” like in “boil” or “sh” like in “shot”. //Onset//: The first sound of a syllable, consisting of consonants or a consonant blend, for example, in the word “hop”, “h” is the onset and in the word “thrash”, “thr” is the onset. Also see //Rime//. //Phoneme//: The smallest unit of sound, consisting of one or more letters, for example “cr” consists of the phonemes “c” and “r”, while “th” is a phoneme of its own as it is a single sound. //Rime//: The part of a syllable, that starts with a vowel and follows the //Onset//, for example, in the word “blend”, the rime is “end”. Also see //Onset//. Segment: To split a word into phonemes in order to spell it, for example the word “hop” would be split into “h” “o” and “p”. Trigraph: A group of three letters that together make one sound such as the “igh” in “high”.
 * Phonics Glossary**

Lewis M & Ellis S (2006) Phonics: Practice Research & Policy. London: Sage Publications. Mallett M (2002) The Primary English Encyclopaedia. London: Routledge Medwell J, Moore G, Wray D & Griffiths V (2001) Primary English: Knowledge and Understanding. Exeter: Learning Matters. All images came from here.
 * References**