What are phonics and how do we teach them?
Phonics involves matching sounds with individual letters or groups of letters. We teach phonics in phases please see picture below:
Why is phonics important?
Phonics are important as they help the children to develop essential skills for reading and writing such as how to blend and segment sounds.
What is blending and segmenting?
Segmenting: When the children say a word and then tell you what sounds they can hear, for example, in the word "cat" the children can hear the sound c-a-t. This skill will help the children with their spelling.
Blending: You say the sounds within the words and they merge those sounds together to make the whole word for example the sounds f-i-sh makes the word fish. This skill helps to develop children's reading.
Please see some fun blending and segmenting activities below:
Tricky words and high-frequency words
Tricky words are words that we cannot sound out phonetically and need to be taught separately. High frequency words words that occur most frequently. Please see pictures below:
Tips for reading at home
How to help your child when reading at home: