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1. THE PRE-PHONICS STAGE
Prior to beginning to learn phonics in earnest (e.g. sound/letter correspondences), there are certain prerequisite skills that need to be developed, including:
● LISTENING SKILLS:
Children must be able to listen carefully to the sounds of speech. They must learn to filter speech sounds from other unrelated environmental sounds. This is usually best achieved by the playing of various listening games. When children have developed good aural comprehension, the game Simon Says is a fun way to further develop listening skills.
● SOUND REPRODUCTION SKILLS:
Once the children have learned to discriminate between various sounds, they should learn to reproduce these themselves. This is usually achieved by modeling the sounds carefully for the children and encouraging them to copy these with particular attention paid to the shape of the mouth when making each sound. The popular fun game Telephone is great for this.
● SEQUENCING SKILLS:
It is important for children learning to read to be able to sequence not only the events of a story but the individual sounds of the words they hear. They must be able to recognize which sound comes before or after another. They should also be familiar with sequencing language such as first, second, before, after, then etc.
2. SOUNDS AND ACTIONS
With our younger kids, it can be difficult to give them an anchor to ‘hold on to the sounds of language.
To help build such an anchor to these sounds, which will later help in linking sounds to written letters, actions are often connected to each sound to aid in memorizing them. This is especially useful in the early stages as it works well for the most basic of sounds.
For example, when making the /m/ sound, children could be taught to rub their tummies as if they have eaten something delicious while saying “mmmmm”.
Or, they could open their mouths wide as if they were eating an apple while saying the /a/ sound.
It is easy to come up with customized actions to go along with the various sounds of English and to then teach these to your class. Just ensure that you consistently use the same actions every time for a specific sound to avoid confusion.
Later, when students come to segment words into their individual sounds, they can use these actions to help recall them.
3. THE LETTER AND SOUNDS CORRESPONDENCES
Explicitly teaching the letter and sound correspondences lie at the heart of good phonics teaching.
It is essential to understand a little of the theory of synthetic phonics to be effective here. Here are a few important points to consider:
● Letter Names vs. Letter Sounds
It is crucial that children understand the difference between the names of the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds as these are two very different things. For example, the letter c is called /see/ but the letter itself usually denotes either a /k/ or /s/ sound. It may seem obvious, but many teachers not trained in the teaching of phonics overlook this distinction and unwittingly make learning to read much more difficult for their students as a result.
● Letters Don’t Make The Sounds
As the limited letters used in English are needed to represent many different sounds, it’s important to point out to students that letters don’t make the sounds, they are simply an option for showing the sound. Often there will be more than one way to show the same sound, for example the sound /s/ can be encoded in a number of different ways including as: s, c, ps. When you are asking your students to write something, you can make the sound and ask them what letter could they use to show this sound. This type of phrasing reinforces the correct relationship between the letters and sounds.
● Avoid The Lazy Vowels
It is also important to remember that when teaching the letters and sounds to avoid making the lazy vowel or schwa sound at the end of a sound. For example, when pronouncing the /k/ sound, make it crisp and short, rather than adding in an extra -uh sound at the end. This will make it much easier for the students to blend sounds together later.
HOW TO PLAN A PHONICS LESSON FOR YOUR CLASS
The detail and delivery of your phonics lessons will depend greatly on the specific situation of your students. However, there are some general points that it’ll be helpful to consider when planning a phonics lesson for your class.
● Keep Phonics Lessons Short and Sweet
To avoid getting bogged down and boring your kids, keep phonics lessons short. In and around 10 to 15 minutes is ideal and no more than 20 minutes. Remember, we want our kids to be lifelong readers and that means they need to enjoy it!
● Be Consistent
There is a lot of ground to cover here and consistency is key. If your students are learning to read, they’ll need to practice and study their phonics every day – preferably at the same time each day too.
● Keep on Moving
While a lot of reinforcement will be required over the course of the year, research has shown that keeping a brisk pace through a phonics program achieves best results. Don’t get bogged down waiting for everyone to get everything before moving on. You will be revisiting the material.
● Keep Things Fun!
Learning to read should be a positive experience, particularly as learning to read means acquiring one of the most empowering skills a child will ever have. To keep things fun, be sure to incorporate lots of enjoyable activities and games into your phonics lessons.
PHONICS GAMES AND ACTIVITIES
I Spy
This perennial classic is a fun way to get some phonics practice in. You can adapt it to say “I spy with my little eye something beginning with…” and say a sound rather than a letter. If you wish to work on letter recognition rather than sound, simply hold up the letter itself quietly.
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