Phonics

 Phonics  Phonics is a sound and letter relationship which is used in the areas of teaching reading, spelling and pronunciation in the early years of literacy. In other words, it’s an understanding that the alphabet is made up of sounds and that eventually these sounds can be blended to make words. Phonics is also includes onset and rime, blends and digraphs.  There are 26 letters in the English alphabet which consist of 4 vowels A E I O U and 22 consonants, creating over 40 phonemes or sounds. Teaching language and literacy, in particular phonics may prove to be a difficult task to make fun for students. It’s important to keep children active in class in order to keep them interested. A range of activities can be conducted to teach phonemic awareness, also known as breaking the word into sounds. Teaching syllables is a great way to introduce onset and rime. If a child know the word FAST you can introduce the word PAST because the onset being the F & C is followed by the rime AST. An excellent activity which can be used to introduce this is to encourage students to use the original work in a creative sentence including the new word. I asked Max to use the words FAST & CAST and put them into a sentence. "The boy rode past on his bike really fast" (Max's Response)

Another activity, aimed more at the younger years is to have the students create the capital and lower case letter of their choice with pipe cleaners or other craft items and from this draw,paint or color an image that ties in with that. This encourages the students to have a hands on approach to learning as well as understanding that in some cases letters may very well have difference sounds.

I have inserted a link to a you tube presentation titled the [|"Funk Alphabet"] encouraging the understanding of the sounds & letters