Term
Digraph /
Trigraph
Split Digraph
Phoneme
Morpheme
Grapheme
Segment
Blend
Consecutive
Consonants
Alphabetic
Code
Phonemic
(awareness)
Phonological
(awareness)
Phonics
PHONICS TERMINOLOGY
Definition
Two or three letters representing one phoneme
Di (2) – snail
Tri (3) – night
Di and Tri – knight
Two letters representing one phoneme but split within a word
bike, made
The smallest unit of sound in a word
The smallest unit in a word that alters meaning
Words with 1 morpheme – house
Words with 2 morphemes – house(s), hous(ing)
Words with 3 morphemes – house(keep)(ing)
SUFFIXES AND PREFIXES ARE MORPHEMES
A letter or sequence of letters that represent a phoneme
Ability to hear individual phonemes in a word (so that in order to spell it, a child must segment into constituent phonemes
and choose a grapheme to represent each phoneme)
Ability to merge individual phonemes together to pronounce a word (in order to read, a child must recognise each
grapheme – not letter – and then merge phonemes together to make a word)
Two or more consonants appearing consecutively in one word (strap)
 Sounds/phonemes are represented by letters
 A phoneme can be represented by one or more letters
 The same phoneme can be represented/spelled in more than one way (play, laid)
 The same spelling may represent more than one sound (ea – deaf, beam)
Awareness of the smallest units of sounds within words
Awareness of the sounds within spoken words e.g. ability to generate rhyme, use alliteration, use syllables
About sounds and how they are represented in letters
Phonics Terminology/RR/1106