Phonics

What is it?​

Phonics involves understanding the relationships between letters or groups of letters (graphemes) and the individual sounds (phonemes) they represent in spoken words. Phonics connects children’s alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness, allowing them to use letter-sound relationships to read (decode) and spell (encode) words. 

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Why is it important?​

Understanding grapheme-phoneme correspondences is essential to understanding the alphabetic principle (the understanding that letters and combinations of letters represent sounds in spoken words). Once students learn these relationships, they can apply this knowledge to:
 

• Decode (read): Recognize letters, identify their corresponding sounds, and blend the sounds together to read unfamiliar words. 

• Encode (spell): Identify the individual sounds in spoken words and represent these sounds using corresponding letters. 

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Developing these skills helps children become increasingly accurate and independent readers and spellers. 

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What does the research say? 

Decades of research demonstrates that explicit and systematic phonics instruction plays a critical role in children’s early reading development. Early instruction that is both explicit and systematic is most effective. This instruction should emphasize the importance of decoding unfamiliar words, rather than guessing or using context clues (e.g., pictures). ​​

For more information check out this resource:

• Reading Rockets – Phonics Introduction  

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What is the developmental progression of phonics skills

​​Ehri (2022)  outlines four developmental phases that students progress through as they learn to read and spell words using the alphabetic principle:  

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1. Pre-Alphabetic Phase: 

   • Students may know some letter names but have limited knowledge of letter shapes and sounds.

   • Instruction at this stage should focus on alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness. Educators can also begin to introduce grapheme-phoneme correspondences. 

2. Partial Alphabetic Phase: 

   • Students know most letter names and shapes but rely on partial letter-sound connections to recognize words.  

   • Instruction at this stage should focus on phonemic segmentation, representation of individual phonemes using graphemes, and learning to blend sounds to decode words. 

   • Reading words in decodable books supports students with applying their grapheme-phoneme correspondence knowledge.  

3. Full Alphabetic Phase: 

   • Students have learned most grapheme-phoneme correspondences and can use this knowledge to decode unfamiliar words. Their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences also allows them to store familiar words in memory as sight words that they can read automatically and spell accurately.  

   • Students develop their sight word vocabulary as they read more connected text (e.g., decodable sentences and stories). 

4. Consolidated Alphabetic Phase: 

   • In this phase, students have acquired a large bank of sight words stored in memory. 

   • Decoding increasingly involves recognizing larger spelling-sound units including onset-rime (e.g., sh-op), syllabic units (e.g., sun-flow-er), and morphemic units (e.g., un-stopp-able). 

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What types of play-based learning are best suited to supporting phonics development? 

Teacher-facilitated approaches are best suited when teaching and reinforcing grapheme-phoneme correspondences: 

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• Teacher-directed Play – Educators can introduce and reinforce letter-sound correspondences through structured, playful activities designed to build and decode simple words. 

• Guided Play – Reinforcement and meaningful application: Educators can support children applying previously taught phonics skills within meaningful, child-directed play experiences. Helping them identify the sounds in familiar and match those sounds to letters. 

• Free Play – Independent application: Children may independently apply previously learned phonics skills during play, using letter-sound knowledge to read and write during child-led play activities. However, free play should not be relied upon for systematic phonics instruction.