A system for approaching reading that focuses on the relationship between letters and sounds.
Decoding involves more than just knowing the letter/sound correspondences. To be a proficient decoder, instruction must also include syllables, syllabication and morphemes.
The combination of explicit phonics and phonological training for all students in kindergarten and first grade provides far greater results in word-level reading skills than any other teaching practice that has been studied.
“By the end of first grade, students taught by a code-based approach perform, on average, the equivalent of 7 to 8 standard score points higher on tests of reading comprehension than students taught with meaning-based approaches.” (Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, Kilpatrick)
How do we teach phonics in the most effective way?
Explicit - the teacher provides clear and precise instruction regarding the letter-sound relationships and directly teaches phonic blending
Systematic - teacher has a specific plan or sequence for introducing letter-sound relationships.
Teach letter-sound knowledge with blending.
Teach basic phonics rules.
Teach some advanced phonics rules, being careful not to overwhelm the reader with too much too soon.
Be careful to enunciate consonants without an extra vowel sound after them (/t/, not /tuh/).
Teach letter names before teaching the sounds of the letters. It is easier for students to learn the sounds for those letters that contain their sound in the initial position in their names (b,d,j,k,p,t,v,z), followed by those letters whose sounds are embedded within the letter’s name (f,l,m,n,r,s,x), leaving for last those letters whose sounds are not found in the letter’s name (h, w, y).
Letter-sound knowledge is based on visual-phonological paired-associate learning which means that students require dozens or even hundreds of exposures to letters and their corresponding names and sounds before they become permanently stored and automatically accessible.
Students need multiple practice opportunities.
Students need multi-sensory input.
Teachers need to use distributed practice (information that is presented at multiple points of the day in small chunks becomes more well established in memory compared to a singular, more lengthy learning experience). Five minute practice sessions four times a day produces better results than one twenty minute session.
Teachers should use picture mnemonics (Drawings of letters that are embedded in a picture with the items in each picture beginning with the sound of the letter embedded within in. Example: Itchy’s Alphabet) Students are trained to notice the initial sounds in words along with the embedded picture mnemonics. Using pictures in which the letter can be logically or meaningfully embedded appears to be more effective than learning letters by themselves or with non-embedded keyword pictures.
Spelling, including invented spelling, is an excellent way to instruct and reinforce letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness and to establish secure orthographic representations (sight words). Teachers must provide corrective feedback to ensure the learning of accurate spelling in order to help establish those words in long-term memory for reading.
Students must also become familiar with digraphs, blends and diphthongs. Digraphs are two-letter combinations that represent a single phoneme. Blends are common consonant patterns of two and sometimes three letters that preserve the typical letter-sound relationships. Diphthongs are vowel combinations that when pronounced, produce a continuous vocal output in which the mouth, lips, and/or tongue position change midway through the pronunciation.
