A Parents Guide to Phonics and Foundational Literacy Skills
If you have a child in kindergarten this year, the odds are, you have heard the terms phonics or the science of reading. In the last three-ish years, educators have returned to phonics for reading instruction after years of using balanced literacy. This is a good thing. Decades of research have shown that phonics, or the science of reading, is more effective for reading instruction as it an evidence-based practice that explains how the brain processes written language.
O.K. but what does that mean? When schools were using balanced literacy, they were instructing students to use cues when they came across a word that wasn’t familiar. So, if your child came across a word that started with a “c,” they could look at the picture of a cat and determine that the word must be “cat.” The problem with this strategy is that eventually, students grow out of picture books, and are expected to read more complicated words. It will become much harder to rely on cues.
By contrast, phonics instruction explicitly teaches sounds, blending, generalizations, and rules to help students decode an unfamiliar word. This helps them break down words that are challenging, and use their decoding skills, rather than visual cues.
The Process of Learning to Read with Phonics
Learning to read is not linear, however there are steps to follow when introducing letters and sounds, and teaching blends. New readers first need to build foundational reading skills before moving into more complex reading tasks.
Phonemic Awareness:
The first step in learning to read through phonics instruction is building phonemic awareness, or learning that each letter has a corresponding sound or sounds. This is a difficult skill for new readers as the English language has 26 letters, but 44 sounds. That doesn’t take into account the sounds that some letters make when combined with another letter (“s” and “h” and “sh”).
Typically, new readers are first taught the short vowel sounds and primary consonant sounds. What does that mean? If you think of the letter “a,” they are first taught “a” is for “apple,” not “a” is for “ate.” With regards to consonants, the primary sounds are the sounds that occur the most, without requiring another letter to make the sound. For example, the letter “c” can be “c” for “cat,” or “c” for “cycle.” We first teach the primary sound of “cat,” since it is the simplest sound to teach. “Cycle” requires new readers to identify the letter that follows the “c” to determine if it is hard c or soft c. That requires a lot more brain power, so it is taught later.
If your child needs more practice with phonemic awareness, check out this post. You might also want to pick up my sound cards from my products page.
Blending:
Blending usually is taught at the same time as phonemic awareness, using just the letters that have been explicitly taught. For example, the first lesson I teach introduces the letters a, o, n, t. I first teach the letter sounds, then I show them how to blend the sounds. When teaching to blend sounds, we mix either a vowel-consonant (VC), or a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC). Examples of blends would be: at, an, not, tan. Usually, we slowly sound out the words in a continuous blend until it becomes more automatic.
Consonant digraphs (sh, th), consonant blends (sm, st), and glued/welded sounds (ing, all) are also taught in blending lessons. They are usually taught after the primary consonant and short vowel sounds are taught, but before long vowel sounds.
If your child needs more practice with blending, check out this post.
Making Meaning with CVC Words:
Blending leads into reading CVC words. Essentially, early readers start with simple consonant-vowel-consonant words and make meaning out of those words. For example, d-o-g is dog. Dog is a CVC word. A dog is a lovable animal. Just having a consonant-vowel-consonant doesn’t make a word a CVC word. “New” follows the pattern, but can’t be decoded by sounding out each letter. New is actually a sight word, or high frequency word because it has either an irregular spelling or doesn’t follow a decodable pattern.
If your child needs support with reading CVC words, check out this post. You could also check out my printable phonics worksheets on my products page. I have worksheets for each short vowel sound.
Sight Words or High Frequency Words:
The final component to early phonics instruction is learning sight words or high frequency words. Sight words or high frequency words are essentially words that appear in texts with high frequency but either have irregular spelling patterns or follow spelling patterns that are taught later in phonics. Due to their frequency in written language, they need to be taught earlier than the sound pattern. An example would be “you.” You can not be sounded out using their primary sounds. Typically, new readers are given a list of sight words to memorize, and they don’t always follow the same patterns.
It can be challenging for new readers to memorize these words. If your child is struggling with memorizing sight words, check out these sight word games I use in my classroom.
Any of these components could be challenging for a new reader. Fortunately, reading improves with practice. The more your child reads, the better their reading becomes. Unfortunately, new readers don’t enjoy reading when they have to spend all of their effort decoding. It takes a lot of effort to decode. Many times, by the time a child decodes a sentence, they’ve forgotten what the sentence is about. It is hard to enjoy something that takes so much effort!
If your child is struggling, consider having them practice with decodable texts, which are basically texts that are easy for a new reader to decode. Sometimes, the decodable text focuses on a specific sound or sound pattern, giving the new reader a lot of practice. Think of decodable texts as the weights they need to lift to build muscle. To supplement the reading practice, consider reading them the high interest books. You want them to see reading as something enjoyable that they eventually will be able to enjoy independently.
If your child is struggling with reading, check out my products for decodable readers. For book recommendations, check out this post.
If you’re looking for a complete phonics curriculum for beginning readers, check out my workbook on Amazon (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. However, I only recommend products that I use and love.).
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