Differemces of teaching phonemes in isolation and in context

How Synthetic Phonics Is Taught:

Students quickly learn all 44 phonemes through whole-class direct instruction. The phonemes and graphemes are taught in isolation, not as parts of words.
As students become more competent with each phoneme, the teacher creates structured lessons that involve blending phonemes to create full words.
For example, if students know the basic single-letter phonemes (a, b, c, d, e, etc.) and some basic two-letter phonemes (at, it, ing), they can start blending them to form words like: cat, mat, fat, hat, sat.

Pros

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  Structure: It provides a very structured introduction to reading. This structure ensures no phonemes or graphemes are missed and students get thorough instruction.
  
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  Good for Manipulating Language: The focus on blending and building words using phonemes helps children when they come across (or need to write) unfamiliar words. They will be very used to the process of blending phonemes to create words.
  
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  Research Backed: Research consistently finds it to be the most effective method of teaching reading.
  

Cons

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  Whole Class: Learning of phenomes and graphemes tends to be done through whole-class instruction rather than differentiated and individualized.
  
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  Decontextualized: Phonemes and graphemes are learned out of context and disconnected to words. This may confuse students and make them unsure about the purpose of the lesson.
  

2. Analytic Phonics

Quick Summary: Focuses on deconstructing words to identify phonemes. Starts with familiar words and breaks them down into their parts.
Also known as: Implicit or Integrated Phonics

Analytic phonics starts with familiar words that students have learned by rote. Lessons then involve having the students decode and break down those words into their phonemes. Usually, the words that are analyzed have a beginning phoneme (onset) and an ending phoneme (rime).
Machin, McNally and Viaregno (2018) define analytic phonics this way:
“Analytic phonics does not involve learning the sounds of letters in isolation. Instead, children are taught to recognize the beginning and ending sounds of words, without breaking these down into the smallest constituent sounds.” (Machin, McNally & Viaregno, 2018, p. 221)
This approach is distinct from the synthetic approach because in the analytic approach phonemes are not taught in isolation. Further, the synthetic phonics approach of ‘blending’ phonemes to ‘build’ words is non-existent.
In short, the focus is on deconstructing language to identify patterns rather than constructing it.