Research shows that when phonics is taught in a structured way – starting with the easiest sounds and progressing through to the most complex – it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. It is particularly helpful for children aged 5 to 7.
Almost all children who receive good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and read for enjoyment.
Children who have been taught phonics also tend to read more accurately than those taught using other methods, such as ‘look and say’. This includes children who find learning difficult to read, for example those who have dyslexia.
Why do we need phonics in elementary Enlish classroom?
There are some reasons to teach reading along with phonics:
1. Phonics is an efficient way to teach reading.
2. Phonics is the fastest way to learn how to read.
3. Phonics makes students better spellers.
4. Phonics requires less rote memorization.
5. Phonics works better for students with learning disabilities.
6. Phonics works better for remedial readers.
Children can then use this knowledge to ‘decode’ new words that they see or hear. This is the first important step to learning to read.
Types of phonics instructional methods and approaches
Phonics instruction can vary with respect to the explicitness by which the phonic elements are taught and practiced in the reading of text. For example, many synthetic phonics approaches use direct instruction in teaching phonics components and provide opportunities for applying these skills in decodable text formats characterized by a controlled vocabulary. On the other hand, embedded phonics approaches are typically less explicit and use decodable text for practice less frequently, although the phonics concepts to be learned can still be presented systematically.
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Teaching students to segment words into phonemes and to select letters for those phonemes (i.e., teaching students to spell words phonemically).
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Phonics through spelling
Analogy phonics
Embedded phonics
Synthetic phonics
Teaching students unfamiliar words by analogy to known words (e.g., recognizing that the rime segment of an unfamiliar word is identical to that of a familiar word, and then blending the known rime with the new word onset, such as reading
brick by recognizing that -ick is contained in the known word kick, or reading stump by analogy to jump).
Teaching students explicitly to convert letters into sounds (phonemes) and then blend the sounds to form recognizable words.
Teaching students phonics skills by embedding phonics instruction in text reading, a more implicit approach that relies to some extent on incidental learning.
