Phonics What is Phonics? ● The “connection between graphemes (letter symbols) and sound” ● The study of the relationship between sounds and letters. It is an essential component of reading and writing practice and instruction in the primary grades ● Helps students to learn the written correspondences between letters, patterns of letters, and sounds ● One element of a comprehensive literacy program that must also include practice in comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, writing, and thinking (and building a love of literacy and learning). Phonology & Phonics ● The relationship between phonological aspects of language (the sounds) and the graphic signs (the letters and combinations of letters) is an important source of information for readers ● The reader needs to notice the visual form and its features, hear the sound in the spoken work and link it to its visual form while reading text A Note About English Language Learners ● All languages have different phonological systems and they may differ slightly (or a great deal) from English ● The student may have excellent phonological awareness in their own language but it will differ from English ● Meaningless “training” for long periods of time on English phonology is not productive and can be confusing ● Language learners should have knowledge of vocabulary words which they are to understand phonemes ● Learn the linguistic characteristics of your students’ native languages ● Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition are easily memorized and can be used to teach PA and print concepts English Orthography ● Every word has three forms – its sounds (phonemes), its orthography (spelling) and its meaning ● Orthographic Mapping: the process that all successful readers use to become fluent readers ○ Students use the oral language processing part of their brain to map (connect) the sounds of words they already know (the phonemes) to the letters in a word (the spellings) ○ Can permanently store the connected sounds and letters of words (along with their meaning) as instantly recognizable words, described as “sight vocabulary” or “sight words” 3 Levels of English: 1. Letter-sound correspondence 2. Patterns (ex: CVCe) 3. Meaning (ex: affixes) Progression ● Letter-sound correspondence for consonants and short-vowels (usually in order of most used or commonly read) ● Consonant digraphs (digraph): two consonants come together to make a new sound ex. Th, wh, ch…etc.) ● Patterns: Long Vowels and Complex Vowels (including vowel digraphs) ● Orthography: homophones, homographs, inflectional endings; as well as affixes and root word knowledge Analytic, Synthetic, Systematic, Explicit, Connected ● Analytic: this phonics instruction is where children learn to compare words to others ○ Ex. they may explore word families (cat, hat, mat, pat…etc.), and look at word parts ● Synthetic: children learn to use the individual sounds to read and make words ● Systematic: the intentionality of order in which phonics is taught to children ● Explicit: direct instruction with teach explaining and modeling, and children applying and using independently with practice ● Connected: phonics is incorporated into authentic reading and writing instruction and experiences Instruction ● Phonics instruction should include the what, the how, and the why for children ● Often we focus on the how and the what (ex: a says /a/), without explaining why it is helpful or important to children ● Strong instruction should also incorporate why these habits/skills are supportive for readers and writers Phonics & Word Study ● Phonics (Graphophonemic relationships ○ Phonics Instruction: refers to teaching students about the relationship between sounds and written letters (alphabetic principle) so that the students learn how to decode and read words ● Word Study ○ Learn to use complex elements of reading to decode more advanced words ■ Ex. students learn how to decode words based on associated word meanings and by learning how to identify word parts, such as affixes and root words) Why Teach Phonics and Word Study? ● Phonics: the ability to sound out and recognize words is a major factor in text comprehension. More specifically, when students possess strong phonics and word study skills, they are able to translate written text into spoken words accurately and concentrate on the purpose of reading (understanding the meaning of the text) ● Word Study: research shows that when phonics instruction is delivered systematically and explicitly, students’ decoding skills are improved. Furthermore, students show greater growth in word study skills as the school year progresses Phonics Instruction Should Be: ● Systematic: Letter-sound relationships are taught in an organized and logical sequence ● Explicit: Important concepts and skills are taught very clearly and directly by the teacher. Children are not expected to infer these concepts and skills merely from exposure Systematic and Explicit Phonics Instruction ● Teaches letter-sound relationships in a clearly defined sequence ● Teaches the major sound/spelling relationships of both consonants and vowels ● Gives children substantial practice in applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships as they learn to read and write ● Uses books or stories that contain a large number of words that children ca decode by using the letter-sound relationships they have learned and are learning ● Provides students with opportunities to spell words and to write their own stories with the letter-sound relationships they are learning ● Produces the greatest impact on children’s reading achievement when it begins in kindergarten or first grade (however, phonics should be included in the instruction of any student who has not yet mastered phonics skills, including adolescents) ● Results in kindergarten and first-grade students being better readers and spellers than their peers who are not taught phonics in a way that is systematic and explicit ● Significantly improves children’s reading comprehension ● Helps children from various backgrounds make greater gains in reading than non-systematic instruction or no phonics instruction ● Helps prevent reading difficulties among at-risk students ● Helps struggling readers overcome reading difficulties ● Phonics teaching is a means to an end. The goal is to provide the tools for children to be fluent and flexible readers When Do I Start Phonics and Word Study Instruction? ● When to begin phonics and words study instruction depends on the emerging development of students’ phonemic awareness skills. Typically, students learn letter-sound relationships before they move on to phonics instruction. ● Phonics instruction is most beneficial when it is initiated early in students’ education — preferably in kindergarten and first grade (Partnership for Reading) Orthographic Mapping and Development Word-Reading Development Grade PreK - K Phonological Skill Word-Reading Early phonological awareness: rhyming, alliteration, first sounds Letters and Sounds: Requires simple phonology to learn sounds that correspond to letters K-1 Basic phonemic awareness: blending, segmenting Phonic Decoding: Requires letter-sound knowledge and blending; a gateway to orthographic mapping 2 - 3+ Advanced phonemic awareness: phonemic proficiency including phoneme manipulation Orthographic Mapping: Requires letter-sound skills and advanced phonemic awareness High Frequency Words ● Kindergarten students are expected to learn 25 to 50, or even more, high-frequency words during the year. Learning these “sight words” often starts before formal phonics instruction begins ● Children do need to know about 10-15 very high frequency words when they start phonics instruction. However, these words can be carefully selected so that they are the “essential words” that are not decodable when the short vowel patterns VC and CVC are taught. Words such as at, can, and had are easier for students to learn using phonics than by simply memorizing them ● Teach 10-15 pre-reading high frequency words only after students know all of the letter names, but before they start phonics instruction (Students who have not learned their letter names inevitably struggle to learn words that have letters they cannot identify) ● Students can demonstrate they know these words in a number of wats, including ○ Finding the word in a list or row of other words ○ Finding the word in a text ○ Reading the word from a card ○ Spelling the word Essential Areas of Phonics and Word Learning (PreK to Grade 8) Early Literacy Concepts (PreK to Grade 1) Even before they can read, children begin to develop some awareness of how written language words, and they continue to develop concepts about processing print as they read their first books Phonological Awareness (PreK to Grade 1) A key understanding in becoming literate is the ability to hear the individual sounds in words, and rhymes, as well as word parts Letter Knowledge (PreK to Grade 1) Letter Knowledge refers to what students know about the graphic characters in the english alphabet — how the letters look, how to distinguish one from another, how to detect them within continuous print, how to use them in words, and the names we use to talk about them Letter-Sound Relationships Students continue to learn about the relationships between letters and sounds in English throughout the elementary school years. In addition to the sounds connected to individual letters, they learn the way alternative sounds may be attached to a letter and they learn to look for the letter combinations (blends and digraphs) and to see them as units Spelling Patterns Efficient word solvers look for and find patterns in the way words are constructed. Knowing spelling patterns helps students notice and use larger parts of words, thus making word solving faster and easier. Student begin with simple phonograms (sat, mat, cat) but progress to learning more complex patterns (-ing, -ight) and to the recognition of patterns in multisyllabic words High Frequency Words Knowing how to read and write a core of high-frequency words is a valuable resource for students as they build their reading and writing processing systems. We call these “high-utility” words because they appear often in print and can sometimes be used to help in solving other words Beginning Readers & Phonics ● There should be many opportunities throughout the day for students to apply phonics and word study learning. Attending to words allows the reader / writer to notice details ● They can do this independently, as partners, or in small or large groups ● Resources to use ○ Alphabet linking charts ○ Consonant Cluster Linking Charts (/bl/, /br/, /sw/, /tr/) ○ Alphabet books ○ Individual Letter Mini Books ○ Matching and Sorting Letters ○ Sorting Words ○ Making Words ○ Word Ladders ○ Touch & Say Additional Phonics Approaches ● Analogy Based Phonics (Analogy Phonics): teaches students to decode new words based on known words. It can be used as part of an analytic phonics approach or in isolation. Relies on student familiarity with rimes in words. For example, if a student knows the word think, she can use this knowledge to decode similar words like drink, wink, and sink. Like analytic phonics, students are encouraged to guess at words and on student recall. ● Embedded Phonics: Phonics through context. Relies on incidental learning. In this method, whole texts are the primary curricular resources. Explicit phonics instruction is only used when students have trouble reading a particular word. Once the word is decoded, explicit instruction ceases. This approach is often used with the “whole-language” or “whole-word” method of reading instruction, in which reading is considered a natural process that is an outgrowth of presenting children with appropriate texts. This is a controversial approach as it is not systematic nor linear ● Phonics Through Spelling: a combined approach where reading and spelling are taught in tandem. Students are taught to spell words phonetically by sounding them out or breaking them into their individual phonemes. The practice is based on the interconnectedness between the sounds of words and their spellings. This interconnectedness is what allows for invented spelling. The advantage to this approach is that spelling is taught early and alongside reading. Critics argue that a total phonetic spelling approach fails to account for all the nuances of the English language. Structures of Phonics Instruction ● Phonics or word study mini lessons can occur at any time of the school day. Many teachers like to schedule it as a part of a whole-class meeting and ask students to participate in application activities while they teach guided reading activities. Others like to confine phonics and word study to one thirty-minute period. However you do it, you can follow a general structure: ○ Phonics Mini Lesson: teach a short, explicit, inquiry-based lesson on one principle related to any of the nine areas of study. Place examples on a chart and have students generalize the principle through inquiry whenever possible ○ Application: Students engage in some kind of “hands-on” application. They can work with a partner or individually ○ Group Share: students gather for a whole-class meeting, and they share their discoveries during the application activities Best Practices For Teaching Phonics ● The Synthetic Phonics approach is the most universal method of phonics instruction that can meet the needs of most learners. ● Systematic phonics instruction (occurs in a particularly designed sequence) and is explicit. Phonics instruction includes teaching individual letter sounds, teaching consonant blends, teaching consonant digraphs, teaching irregular/challenging vowel sounds like r-controlled vowels. ● Phonics instruction is most effective when it also includes connected texts or words in sentences and paragraphs instead of only in isolation or lists. ○ Please note: this is not embedded phonics. In embedded phonics, phonics is only taught explicitly when understanding of connected texts breakdown. In a systematic, explicit phonics approach, phonetic structures are first introduced in isolation through direct instruction and practice. Only after this, are connected texts introduced Phonics Vocabulary ● Phoneme: smallest unit of sound in our spoken language ● Grapheme: a written letter or a group of letters representing one speech sound (b, sh, ch, igh, eigh) ● Onset: an initial consonant of consonant cluster ● Rime: the vowel or vowel and consonant(s) that follow the onset ● Digraph: two letters that represent one speech sound (ai, oo, ow) ● Schwa: a vowel sound sometimes heard in an unstressed syllable and that most often sounds like /uh/ or the short /u/ sound as in cup ● Morpheme: the smallest meaningful units of language First Grade Phonics Six Syllable Patterns 1. Closed syllables: Most common, they end in a consonant that causes the vowel to make a short sound. 2. Open Syllables: End in vowels and make long vowel sounds. 3. Vowel-Consonant-E Syllables (VCE Syllables): End in –e which makes the final vowel sound long. (magic e) 4. Vowel Teams: Two vowels next to each other that make a single sound. Some vowel teams are digraphs (only two letters) and others consist of three or four letters (laugh, high, and hay). 5. Consonant-le Syllables (C-le syllables or final syllables): When these endings are joined with an open syllable, there is a long vowel sound and no double consonant. When they are joined with a closed syllable, there is a short vowel sound and double consonant. There are 11 –le patterns in English: -ble, -gle, -zle, -fle, -tle, -dle, -stle, -ckle, -ple, -cle, -kle (schwa – unstressed central vowel) 6. R-controlled syllables (vowel-r syllables): Often the most challenging. A vowel is followed by the letter r, which changes the way the vowel is pronounced. Explicit instruction and practice with r-controlled vowel forms (er, ie, ur, ar, or) and frequent repetition/review is essential. (bossy r) Sequence of Phonics Patterns Phonics word patterns are introduced in sequence based on degree of difficulty. 1. VC or CVC words with simple (continuous) initial sounds (e.g., man, pat, fin, at, on) 2. VCC or CVCC words with initial continuous sounds (e.g., ask, mash) 3. CVC words with initial stop sounds (e.g., cab, hit) 4. CCVC words (easier blends with continuous sounds are generally taught before more challenging blends with stop sounds) (e.g., flat, slap, stop, crab) 5. CCVCC, CCCVC, or CCCVCC words with various levels of complexity are then introduced, including consonant digraphs (e.g., /sh/ /ch/) and vowel combinations (e.g., ee, ea, oo) as well as r-controlled vowels like butter, wither, firm, germ, and so on. ● ● It is unlikely to find an entire text that contains only VC or CVC words or decodable words, but shared / paired / choral reading strategies can help make texts accessible to learners Explicit practice with high-frequency sight words alongside phonics instruction is recommended Classifying Phonemes ● Continuant Sounds: ○ Fixed configuration of the vocal tract ○ Vowels ○ Consonants ○ Whisper /h/ ○ Nasals /m/, /n/, /ng/ ○ Fricatives ○ Voiced/v/, /zh/ (vision), /th/ (them) ○ Unvoiced: /f/, /s/, /sh/, /th/, /h/ ● Non-Continuant Sounds ○ Vocal tract changes over the pronunciation of the sound ○ Diphthongs: sound formed by the combination of 2 vowels in a single syllable that come together to create a distinct sound (ex: foil), this is different than a vowel digraph (ea, where to vowels say 1 phoneme sound) ○ Semivowels: sound intermediate between a vowel and a consonant. /w/, /y/ ○ Affricatives: consonant sounds made up of a stop and releases with a fricative (type of consonant made by the friction of breath in a narrow opening. /J/, /C/ ○ Stop sounds ○ Voiced: /b/, /d/, /g/ ○ Unvoiced: /p/, /t/, /k/ Patterns for Second Grade, Third Grade, and Beyond ● Compound (to be a true compound word, each of the smaller words must carry meaning in the context of the word) ● VCCV (or/bit, ig/loo, tun/nel) ● CLE (ma/ple, stum/ble, tur/tle) ● VCV (hu/mid, ra/ven, mu/sic ● Prefix (divide immediately after the prefix) ● Suffix (divide immediately before the suffix) Prefixes and suffixes are units that always stay together as patterns.) Phonological Awareness vs. Phonics Phonological Awareness Phonics Does not involve print Involves print Auditory Visual Begins before students have developed a set of letter-sound correspondences by using manipulatives Focuses on the representation of spoken language Focuses on the sounds of spoken language Helps students identify words in print by sounding out the phonemes, blending them together, and saying the word What is Phonics Instruction? ● Teaching the relationships between the letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) Blends: a consonant blend is two or more consonants that come together in a word. Their sounds blend together, but each sound is heard Consonant Digraphs: when two or more consonants are joined together and form a new sound, they are called a consonant digraph Vowel Sounds ● Short vowel sounds ● Long vowel sounds ● Magic E or Bossy E: when a syllable ends in a silent “e”, the silent “e” is a signal that the vowel in front of it is long ● R-controlled vowels: a vowel followed by an “r” stands for a special sound that is neither long nor short, but “controlled” by the “r” ○ The letter r comes after the vowel ○ Some r-controlled vowels have more than one vowel Vowel Digraphs ● Vowel Pairs: If a syllable or one syllable word has two vowels, the first vowel usually represents the long sound, and the second vowel is silent ○ “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking” ● Long A: a___e, ai, ay ○ Examples: away, face, paly, wait, game, rain ● Long I: i__e, ie ○ Examples: bike, bite, pie, lie, tie, nine, line ● Long U: u__e, ui, ue ○ Examples: blue, glue, tube, flute, suit ● Long O: o__e, ow, oe, oa ○ Examples: bone, nose, own, bowl, toe, coat, foal ● Long E: ea, ee ○ Examples: jeans, seat, beak, east, jeep, beet, seed Diphthongs: a vowel sound where the tongue changes position to produce the sound of two vowels ● AW Diphthong ○ Examples: straw, claw, law, saw, thaw, draw, hawk, crawl ● AU Diphthong ○ Examples: haul, fault, vault, author, cause, pauper ● EW Diphtong ○ Examples: brew, chew, cashew, blew, dew, stew, drew, few ● OO Diphtong ○ Examples: food, bamboo, room, taboo, shampoo ● OI Diphthong ○ Examples: boil, point, coin, noisem oil, join ● OY Diphthong ○ Examples: soy, oyster, toy, decoy, enjoy ● OW Diphthong ○ Examples: growl, brown, down, bow, how, flower ● OU Diphthong ○ Examples: ouch, loud, cloud, couch, house, found Syllables: words are made of small parts called syllables, each syllable has one vowel sound ● Closed Syllable ○ Can only have one bowel and is followed by one or more consonants ○ Vowel sound is always short (CVC or VC patterns) ■ Examples: last, napkin ■ Exceptions: -ind, -ild, -old, -olt, -ost ● Open Syllables ○ Can only have one vowel sound (last letter in the syllable) ○ Vowel sound is always long ■ Examples: hi, skyline, me Onset and Rime: ● Onset: the beginning sound of a words ● Rime: the vowel sound and any sound that comes after Word Families (Phonographs) ● Made of a series of words that uses the same rime ● A rime has the same middle and ending sound ○ Examples: -ab family (dab, gab, cab, jab, tab, etc.); -op family (bop, cop, hop, mop, top, etc.) Phonics Instructional Practices & Gradual Release of Responsibility ● As an educator you plan connected phonics learning experiences (with an authentic text/song/poem) and you will need to utilize the gradual release of responsibility when you plan out your lessons
